


Paradox Backlash

by G_J_Smith



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Almost Everyone is Bi, Also: Author still learning how guns work, Alternate Timelines, Canon Typical Mood Whiplash, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Death (Totally Not the one from Discworld), Eldritch Horrors, Extreme Liberties Taken with regards to how The Sorrow's powers work, Female Characters Actually Receiving Character Development, Fix-It of Sorts, Found Family, Future Tags may contain spoilers, Gen, Ghosts, I won't promise what I can't deliver after all, Illustrated Fic, Leaning on the Fourth Wall, Love Triangles are for Squares, Original Characters - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychic Abilities, This includes ships and additional characters, Time Travel, Video Game Logic, an attempt by a sheltered millennial to make her faves' lives suck slightly less, no one is straight, will go all over the map in terms of the Metal Gear Saga timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2018-12-23 00:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11978052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/G_J_Smith/pseuds/G_J_Smith
Summary: The Boss is snatched from space and time ten minutes before her scheduled demise, upsetting the plans that multiple parties, both mundane and not, had laid out for her. Metal Gear Raiden abruptly stops being a Secret Theater joke, bringing with him the anti-time paradox police. Death recruits the Cobras to find the Boss. The truth of Ocelot's birth comes out in an unnecessarily dramatic fashion. Everyone learns a valuable lesson about trust and friendship. In the middle of all this, Snake and EVA still have to find a way to finish their mission and save the world. And as it turns out, Major Zero was right about the UFOs. A Fix-It Fanfic about the perils of Fix-It Fanfic, family, and time travel.





	1. Your Circuit's Dead, There's Something Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Happy September 2nd and 53rd anniversary of the Boss’s canonical death! What better day could I have picked to post this?  
> This opening chapter is dedicated to George Weidman, who made me interested in playing Metal Gear; my roommate's brother, who made the mistake of lending me MGS3; and Brandon, who wanted to read this, which talked me into posting it now instead of Mother's Day 2018. I hope you're all proud of yourselves.  
> Watch for awkward tonal shifts that come with someone who's been in mostly PG-13 comedy-based fandoms (Homestuck, Discworld, The Adventure Zone, Steven Universe) since 2011. Writing a character older than 23 who has never spent a second on the internet is a... change of pace. Please keep that in mind and go easy on me while I find my feet with these cats.

Most people took the inevitable march from life to death for granted. You didn't know there'd be bumps in the path to the Other Side until you tripped over them. Or maybe, if you were one of them.

The Sorrow knew this well, being as he was. A life was like a footprint left in the muddy riverbed of the Other Side; the harsher the movement, the deeper the print. Those who died suddenly or unjustly were always louder than those who had gone peacefully. And oh, how the restless ones could scream.

Presently, the gloomy gray sky over his riverbed was raining with a vengeance.

No one knew exactly why he was like this; in his earlier days, before the Cobras, there had been murmurs about dissecting his brain to find out. Obviously, that hadn't worked out. A brain couldn't be much good to the march of scientific progress when a bullet had splattered it all over the cliffs of Tselinoyarsk. He supposed they would just have to settle for "things just happen, what the hell?"

It was tied to his mood, somehow, and that crossed over even into the Waking World. The Boss had sensed that; twice now, she'd called out to him when it rained. And there he'd been. Watching. Waiting.

But he'd said nothing. There'd be time enough for them to talk later.

It was more of a sense than anything, the same way his Joy had once told him she had learned to feel the presence of those approaching her. It was a sense of anticipation, of certainty of what was about to happen. Feeling it upon the Boss's return to Tselinoyarsk, The Sorrow had stepped from his dreary dream of the mangrove swamp into the Waking World and followed his old comrades for one last fight.

And now here the Cobras were, reunited. Save for one of them.

"This sucks," the Fury mumbled. His face was almost comically singed under his smoky cosmonaut helmet. The rain of the Sorrow's limbo pattered off the glass.

"I'll say." The Fear sat cross-legged in one of the strange shade world's trees. The Fury was huddled next to him in an attempt to keep out of the damp, looking far less comfortable than his comrade.

"How much longer, Sorrow?" The Pain demanded. He too was huddled under a tree, mask pulled tight across his exposed skin. The Sorrow no longer felt any sensation here in this world, but that was partially a product of the mind. A mind felt what it expected to feel. And the Pain expected to feel a cool drizzle that was uncomfortable on his welts, but not enough to trigger his parasite-enabled adrenal reaction. The rain was putting him out as much as it was the Fury's flames.

The End let out a long breath. It would've been a sigh if it hadn't sounded much more like a death rattle. Unlike the other newly dead Cobras, he seemed to take to shutting out what his mind said ought to be happening. He sat as though asleep with water up to his chest. "Patience," he hummed, "we're beyond the reaches of even time now. Might as well relax and enjoy it before we step into the great unknown."

The Fury grumbled something unintelligible. These four had not joined the Sorrow upon their deaths. No, instead all four of them had appeared here at once and began interrogating the Sorrow as soon as they laid eyes on him. They expected this to be his doing, but Sorrow had been just as surprised as they were. As far as he knew, this was his limbo alone. His final resting place was by the river; thus, the drizzly, flooded mangrove swamp was a half-memory, a world between the worlds. Over the two (eternity) years he'd been here, the Sorrow had come to regard it as a kind of bubble in the membrane between the living and the dead, one that the Boss's last apprentice had drifted into as he hung between those two sides. As for why the Cobras were here, the closest guess he had was the same reason he lingered with the living: waiting.

"Perhaps it's not her time after all," the Fury mused. Fear nodded, chin resting on one knee while the other stretched across the branch to hold his balance. The rest were silent: when Sorrow knew, he knew with certainty.

"Here's hoping the new blood at least kills her decently," Fear grumbled, once that brief light of hope had flickered out. "Up front. Looking her in the eyes when she goes. It's the least she deserves."

There was a hum of agreement from the gathered ghosts. The Sorrow returned to his glum watch over the misty river. He could feel it, like a thunderhead boiling on the horizon. The Boss's passing would be one that would rock the world, and not for the better. So sad, that their reunion should happen under so dark a cloud.

Something moved in the gray horizon. Sorrow pushed his glasses up and focused, willing his eyes clear of the mortal limitations of nearsightedness. A dark shape was coming through the gloom.

He put up a hand and a hush fell over the mangroves. Not even the phantom rain whispered in the silence.

The shape resolved itself into a human form, the shadow into a cloak. The former Cobras stood at attention, ready to welcome their leader. But as it came closer, the Sorrow realized that the cloak was not the dark cape the Boss had draped over her shoulders, but a full black garment that glided in the water at the figure's feet.

His unit drew back like a bowstring. This was not who they thought they were waiting for.

The cloaked figure's hood cocked sideways as it regarded the Sorrow and his comrades from a distance. It didn't seem to be cowed by this shadowy otherworld and the five strange and very dangerous men in it. If anything, it seemed puzzled.

The Sorrow picked out a scythe blade strapped over the figure's shoulder, edged with a blue against the washes of gray. Then again, what reason did the Reaper have to fear anything?

Slowly, Death raised a bony hand and waved.

Nice place you have here, said a voice, more in the Sorrow's head than anywhere else. Sound returned as his startled comrades disturbed the water.

REALLY, JUST LOVELY. VERY UNIFORM. VERY GRIM. NOTHING LIKE THE GARISH HODGEPODGE OF MEMORY SOME OF THE OTHER BUBBLES HAVE. IT CAUSES A REAL STRAIN ON THE EYES AFTER A WHILE.

The Fury found his voice first, in an uncharacteristic mumble. "Personally, I could do without so much water."

YOU'LL HAVE TO TAKE IT UP WITH THE OWNER OF THIS FINE ESTABLISHMENT. Death pointed a finger at the Sorrow.  WHICH IS IN FACT WHAT I AM HERE TO DO. THAT IS WHY YOU ALL ARE HERE, INSTEAD OF OFF TO WHATEVER AFTERLIFE MOST TICKLES YOUR FANCY.

"So there is another side? You might've told me ages ago," mused the End. Death shrugged.

I DON'T KNOW. IT'S NONE OF MY BUSINESS.

"How do you not know?" the Pain demanded, throwing his hands up. Drawing himself up, he stood almost as tall as Death. "You're the Grim Reaper! Taker of mortal souls!"

LOOK, I'M JUST THE FERRYMAN. DO YOU TYPICALLY ASK YOUR TAXI DRIVER ABOUT THE RESTAURANT YOU'RE HEADED TO? ...ACTUALLY, SOME PEOPLE DO. DISREGARD THAT. BAD METAPHOR. THE POINT IS-

"We were waiting for the Boss!" Fury interjected. "Where is she, you dried out bag of bones?"

ABOUT THAT-

"Is she supposed to die or isn't she?!"

THERE'S BEEN A SMALL-

The Sorrow held up another hand for silence. He saw his comrades restrain the steaming cosmonaut and gave himself the ensuing silence to marvel over the Fury interrupting Death Itself.

Death Itself's shoulders sagged. THANK YOU. IT'S NOT LIKE I'M NOT USED TO THIS, BUT THIS IS A... MOST UNORTHODOX OCCASION. YOU WERE WAITING ON THIS "BOSS". WERE YOU NOT?

"I was," said the Sorrow. "The spirits of the dead-"

MAY SOMETIMES LINGER AFTER DEATH TO ACCOMPANY LOVED ONES TO THE GREAT BEYOND, YES, YES, I HAVE BEEN AROUND THAT METAPHORICAL BLOCK. VERY POIGNANT. VERY "ROMANTIC". NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE APPEAL, MYSELF.

Death reached inside his cloak. The Fear and The Pain eased their holds on Fury to brace themselves. The End, though, was still untroubled.

When the bleached bones returned into view, they held something. It held a sharp glass outline in this murky world.

THIS IS HIGHLY UNUSUAL FOR ME TO ASK, BUT AS YOU ARE THE ELITE OF SO-CALLED "WET-WORK", ESPECIALLY NOW- There was a pause for the pun to land. The Fear snickered. Sorrow heard Fury growl. -I AM GIVING YOU A NEW ASSIGNMENT.

"You know this bunch only takes orders from the Boss," The End said. Death turned his gaze to the old man. There was a wet squishing noise as End staring back. Sorrow kept his gaze ahead. He'd never liked watching End protrude his eyeballs.

Death must have felt the same way. With a flash of blue from under the cowl, he raised the hourglass in his hand so they could see a name carved in straight, typed lettering on the base. There was an intake of phantom breaths.

"Was her name really...?"

Sorrow took a moment to realize that End was asking him. He glanced at the rest of his old unit. Their eyes held the same question.

The Sorrow wracked his memory. He liked to believe his Joy showed more of herself to him than she had to anyone else. But intimate moments snatched from war zones weren't the same as simple facts. He didn’t know.

In some ways, she was more of a ghost than he was now, appearing fully formed on battlefields when needed. He didn't know her birthday either, just how old she was. He didn't know  _where_  she'd been born beyond the miles of land he knew simply as "America", or where she'd grown up, or hardly anything of her life before she had plucked him from that research facility.

"I don't know," Sorrow finally admitted. His eyes were drawn back to the name on the hourglass and then abruptly looked away. It felt wrong, having that knowledge without her knowing.

THIS IS THE RIGHT LIFETIMER. BELIEVE ME, I OUGHT TO KNOW, said Death.

Death held out the hourglass. Slowly, The Sorrow stepped forward to take it from the reaper, the metaphor dawning on him as he grasped it in his hands like the precious thing it was. The bases on both ends were octagons cut from steel plates, polished to a mirror shine. The Sorrow held the side with the Boss's name close to his chest to keep it from view. The hourglass was unadorned in every way, except for a long score coiling its way up the glass bulbs. It looked almost artful, like a snake's spine. There was only a pinch of sand left in the top.

IF YOU HAVE DOUBTS, Death reached into his cloak again and produced a simple black bound volume. It was so thick you could've used it as a door stop.

IF YOU WON'T THINK OF THIS AS A FAVOR TO DEATH ITSELF, WHICH I HEAR IS A USEFUL THING TO HAVE, OR TO KEEP THE UNIVERSE FROM SHAKING ITSELF APART, THEN PERHAPS YOU WILL DO THIS FOR YOUR OLD COMMANDER.

The Sorrow tilted the glass slightly, careful not to let the Boss's remaining life fall from his grip. Every grain stayed in place.

"The sand has stopped," he noted, tapping a finger against the bottom bulb. The pinch hadn't jammed, the sand inside had simply frozen mid-fall.

YES. WITH TEN MINUTES LEFT.

The Sorrow looked up at the skull beneath the black hood. "Is that when she dies?"

Death paused, the book held pensively in his hands. Then he opened it, thumbing through the pages.

IT WOULD BE, he said, apparently finding the passage he'd been searching for. BUT THERE'S BEEN A... PROBLEM.

 

* * *

 

 

A warm breeze wound its way through the field of lilies, scattering stray petals into the air. The sun overhead was beginning to approach the day's end. It listed gently towards the mountains, giving the clouds, the flowers, the lake, all a golden cast. In the middle of it all stood the Boss (the name on her lifetimer neatly omitted from Death's narration of the end of her life), radiant, the fierce daylight giving her back some of the fire that had inspired her prior code name. You would think her white sneaking suit would make her stand out in a place like this. Make her easy to spot. As her apprentice would learn, this impression was incorrect.

"Let's make this the greatest ten minutes of our lives, Jack."

And they did.

And in thousands of other universes, that would have been the end of her.

Actually, in thousands more universes, it wasn't Snake that put an end to her, but the bombers that arrived ten minutes later to rain hellfire down on the peaceful lake side. It was the Boss's form of insurance: even if Snake failed, his mission would succeed. But those universes, the ones without a Big Boss or his sons, would have their own consequences.

No, in this universe, as it was written in Death's tome, Snake would defeat the Boss. He would kill her neatly with a bullet from her own gun. He would be welcomed home a hero, with her cast as the villain, and the knowledge of that theater would eat him away into one of history's greatest monsters.

(Or at least, said Death, skipping over pages upon pages and snapping the black book shut, that is how it should have happened.)

In this universe, the Boss's disciple, the man known as Snake, braced himself. He'd tried to fight the Boss hand to hand several times this past week. He only had broken bones and bruises so livid they looked like burns to show for his trouble.

To say nothing of the times he'd had to put his field-stripped guns back together. He was preparing to take cover, to take her by surprise (he could never take her head on, not in a million years), when all of a sudden-

One second the Boss was there, statuesque in the daylight, and then, in a split-second blink of electricity, she simply was not.

Snake peered out from behind a bare tree. If he let his guard down just because he'd lost sight of her, the Boss would shoot him to pieces and lecture his ghost.

He had seen the Fear vanish with his experimental camouflage suit, and if his eyes (well, eye, singular now) weren't fooling him, he had even seen the Boss disappear with a similar crackle of sparks. His remaining eye swept the perimeter for telltale signs of the stealth camo: scattering petals. Flowers that moved against the wind. A warped patch of space, like a funhouse mirror in the shape of her silhouette.

There was nothing.

Which didn't mean anything. There were plenty of trees in the flower field and plenty of places to hide. Snake crept out from behind his cover in a crouch, his knife and his Colt pistol held out at the ready. Ten minutes, the Boss had said, they had ten minutes. And she would come at him with everything she had.

Two and a half minutes later with still no sign of her, Snake risked calling out. "Boss?"

Wind whistled through the lilies. Snake strained his ears but heard nothing out of the ordinary.

Counting the seconds in the back of his mind (that helpful phantom with his countdown timer could've made himself really useful right about now), Snake stood from his stance and walked, without any attempt at stealth, into the center of the clearing.

He called again, "BOSS?" and fully expected to receive a bullet wound or six for his trouble. A rustling made him jump and whirl around, only to see the Boss's white horse walk over from where it had been calmly grazing.

Snake held out a hand. The horse pushed its muzzle calmly against it, snorting. A hush fell.

The last part of his mission was to eliminate the Boss. Snake knew that. His support knew that. Eva knew that. Even the Boss had known that. She would never allow him to run away, and she herself would die before deserting something she had set her mind to. But she had, for all intents and purposes, gone.

With one eye peeled, Snake took up the Andalusian's reins and began to lead it to the edge of the lily field, toward the WIG sitting on the lake's surface. With his free hand, he tapped his radio on, scanning through the frequencies.

"Para-Medic," he called as soon as the channel cleared, "you've got an eye on all my vitals, right?"

 _"Yeah?"_  her voice came back into his ear.  _"They're all normal right now. Really normal, in fact. What's wrong, Snake?"_

"Did you notice anything odd in the last few minutes?"

_"Other than the fact you should be in pitch battle right now, but your heart rate isn't going a million miles an hour? Not... really."_

"Is there any other way you're monitoring me over there?"

_"A few, yes. We've got your approximate location-"_

"What about the Boss?"

_"Snake, I doubt even Sherlock Holmes could track the Boss down if she didn't want to be found."_

"But she's vanished! Just- disappeared into thin air! Don't tell me you don't know... I dunno, something!"

He expected Para-Medic to tell him to calm down, or that he was seeing things, or that he was out of his mind, like when he ate those glowing mushrooms. But she was quiet. Snake had walked out of the field of flowers now and over the slope guarding them from view. He had expected the Boss to materialize from thin air and berate him for trying to leave the battlefield, but she did not.

 _"Hang on..."_  Para-Medic's voice came back unsure.  _"About four minutes ago, there was some kind of blip in the recording equipment..."_

"What kind of blip?" Snake demanded, picking up his pace. The Boss's horse trotted obediently alongside him. He had less than six minutes left to finish this and get the hell away from here.

 _"I-I'm not sure!"_  Para-Medic sounded strange, nervous, and he could hear her shuffling paper around. _"I thought it was just the distance and the equipment, it's not a perfect system we have here, it happens sometimes- hang on, I'm getting Zero."_

She heard her call the Major's name away from the radio mic. Now who was the crazy one? Snake thought, with a spark of righteous vindication over glowing mushrooms and ghosts.

 _"Snake,"_  Zero's voice came in clipped and hurried over the mic,  _"are you sure she's gone?"_

"If this is a game she's playing, it's a long one," Snake huffed. He was two-thirds of the way to the WIG. "I looked for her, Major, tried flushing her out. I'm a few hundred yards away from where she wanted me to be, no cover out here, but she's just. Nowhere!"

There was no sound in his left ear except the hum of dead air static.

_"And you are positive?"_

"I know her better than anyone," Snake said. "I'm sure."

More static. The hum of the WIG's engines grew louder. Snake glanced at the horse beside him and, after a moment's thought, put a foot in the stirrup and swung himself up. The Andalusian let him mount without a fuss.

Sure, Snake was prepared to do nearly anything to survive. For example: eating the GRU's guard dogs, if he'd ever been desperate enough. But even the knowledge that horse meat was more socially acceptable a meal than most of what he'd been scavenging didn't make the image of the animal getting caught in the MiGs' blast any more appealing. After all, it belonged to the Boss.

He pushed it into a gallop. The water's edge flew by as they skirted around the lake. Snake glimpsed Eva in the WIG's cockpit and signaled as he went by. The side of the lake opposite the lily field ought to be far enough that the Boss's horse could make a run for it.

"I thought it might be another experimental stealth suit," Snake said into his radio, breathless as he rode. "There were these same blue sparks that the Fear had right before she disappeared. But you can't keep it up in that suit for long, it really takes it out of you."

He still had a ramen noodle package tucked away in his backpack. He wondered briefly if the Boss would've crept out of hiding for it. It  _was_  that good.

 _"I doubt it. Records say the Fear had the only prototype for that kind of camouflage,"_  Zero said. _"Snake, Para-Medic is right. It's not just the equipment monitoring your vital signs._ Everything, _and I do mean everything, that we had running experienced the same jump at the exact same time. The radio, recording equipment, I'm even getting a report saying that seismographs got the same little wobble. And not just in Tselinoyarsk, either, Sigint is on the phone with San Andreas right now to double check their findings."_

"So what now?" Snake asked, slowing the horse down as he approached the opposite side of the lake. He slid off before the animal could even come to a complete stop. After a moment's thought, he went to undo its riding tack. Less weight would make for a faster pace.

_"...you understand this doesn't mean your mission is finished."_

His hands paused on the bridle's strap.

"I know."

_"Khrushchev needed us to prove the Boss was a traitor to the U.S., beyond a shadow of a doubt."_

"And without a body..." Snake trailed off, finishing what Zero had left unspoken.

_"Yes. This puts us in a sticky situation."_

Snake gave the unburdened horse a smack on the flank, sending it running for the hills. Behind him, the WIG was coming around, skating the surface of the water like an oversized duck.

He took one last look around as he jogged back to the plane. Nothing. "Zero, there's MiGs headed this way, we need to leave."

_"I understand. You and Eva get the hell out of there, we'll try and figure this out on our end."_

"What do you think happened?" Snake asked, reeling. She was really gone, huh? That was it? Here one minute, gone the next? "I mean, people don't just disappear, where'd she go?"

 _"I don't know,"_  you could almost hear Zero shrugging.  _"Maybe a UFO took her?"_

Snake smiled wryly. Zero had once claimed to have been abducted and would swear up and down that it was true, and yet  _he_  accused Snake of being crazy for seeing ghosts. "Be serious, Major."

_"I am, Snake, it's a legitimate possibility at this point."_

Snake stood in the back of the WIG as it accelerated across the lake, staring out at the Boss's would-be final battlefield. He frowned, bewildered, mind rolling like thunderclouds. Well, it wasn't like Zero was wrong.

That left his mission was incomplete. FOX's name was not yet clear.

But even though the Boss was gone, Snake was not the one who'd had to end her.

Eva glanced around the pilot's chair as Snake sealed the door shut. Her eyes were first sympathetic, and then puzzled. "What's the matter?"

Snake breathed in. "Well..."

 

* * *

 

 

Death put the book back into his cloak. The gathered spirits of the Cobras let the narration hang in the mist before The Pain shot a hand up.

"So, what DID happen to her?" he asked.

THAT'S THE PROBLEM. I DON'T KNOW.

 

* * *

 

 

In golden daylight, the Boss stepped forward to face her son, her Patriot in one hand and knife in the other.

The world warped.

It was like a veil had fallen over everything but her. The world was one big movie screen and the curtains had come down with the projector still running. The Boss stopped in her tracks as her surroundings changed, weapons at the ready. What the hell was this?

Green jungle and lush lakeside crumbled into rocky hills. Color drained into stony shades of gray, the humidity of living things dried up. Everything  _sharpened_ \- she had no other word for what her eyes were seeing - until minute details jumped out in incredible relief. The Boss winced in the sudden glare of sunlight bouncing off her sneaking suit, the world around her washed out.

She was now standing on a desert roadway.

The remnants of crumbling archways loomed on a hillside some distance down the road. The Boss caught sight of two figures, both on horseback, one standing among the ancient architecture and the other stopped in its tracks headed towards her.

And she was in the open. Her white sneaking suit, with the goddamn  _reflective accents_ , was a beacon in the harsh sun.

Gravel clattered underfoot. The shadow of a cliffside would be inadequate cover, but there were hoofbeats headed her way. Those pillars spoke of a history older than the United States; one way or another, she'd been dropped in enemy territory. As if there was anywhere left to her that wasn't "enemy territory".

Boss pressed herself harder into the rough stone wall, holding her Patriot close. She was not unarmed. But if it came to a fight, it was at least two against one. She had a duty she'd just been ripped away from. The last thing she wanted was a firefight with someone who wasn't Jack.

The hoofbeats drew closer, veering off the road. The Boss cursed herself for this flashy damn suit, like this was a predictable situation she could have avoided if she'd been a little smarter. She could only hope a brief glimpse wasn't enough to track her by, and that when that proved an obvious fool's hope, that the person approaching wasn't hostile. Or that there were only two of them.

The rider stopped maybe ten? Fifteen? Meters away. She heard someone dismount. After that there was only the faintest hint of disturbed soil underfoot. Whoever was approaching was trying their best to be quiet and doing a damn respectable job of it.

The first shot hit the gun barrel that crept around the corner. A scrape of rocky soil and a clatter of metal told her of her enemy's retreat. Her Patriot leading the way, the Boss rolled into the open daylight, sighted down her rifle and-

Was so, so glad she didn't squeeze the trigger.

"Jack?"

The man in front of her was older. Rougher. A scarred and haggard face and longer hair made it look like he'd recently taken a drag through hell. He was crouched on the ground, one hand reaching for holstered weapon, the other holding a knife in the same position the Boss had taught him a decade ago.

Snake's face went ashy under a coat of grime and the Boss felt her own do the same. They both stepped away from one another.

"Boss?" said Snake, in a voice so low you could mistake it for the gravel crunching under his boots. The Boss knew the look, and the feeling that went with it - like the ghosts of your past had clawed their way out of hell for the express purpose of dragging you back there with them.

She lowered the barrel of the gun, but only by an inch.

The older Snake opened his mouth but said nothing, shaking his head. The Boss swore she could see a wet shine in his eye before he ducked his gaze (taking your eyes off the enemy, a foolish mistake) and that was when she noticed the chunk of metal sticking out of his forehead.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, standing up and moving out of the revealing sunlight again. Between his personal haunting and the barrel of the Patriot still trained on him, Snake - if it was him - stood no chance against her. "Where are we?"

It was a moment before he answered. "Outskirts of Ghwandai Town, near Kasul. Afghanistan."

Snake spoke very quietly and didn't look up. He paused, breath held as though to speak further.

"'The world must be made one again,' isn't that what you said?"

She lowered the gun.

"Is that really you, Jack?" the Boss asked softly, easing out of her stance. She'd said those words to him minutes ago, but to him they were an heirloom. A battered talisman.

Snake stood up. His left hand re-sheathed his knife. A mechanical clattering drew the Boss's attention to the fact that he wasn't wearing some kind of long, thick glove, but that the hand was entirely mechanical.

The Boss could hear her pulse pounding in her ears, riding off a now twice-thwarted battle high and the dawning implications while her mind tried to work through this. What the hell had just happened to her, that she was here seeing this? What had happened to  _him?_

Snake looked up. He wasn't shedding tears, but the possibility was still there. Rising to his feet, his empty, flesh-and-blood hand reached towards her before dropping back to his side.

This kind of distraction could've gotten them both killed. It was a prime opening for the enemy. You couldn't let yourself be distracted by pain. The Boss had told a much, much younger man something similar when training had broken bones.

"Yeah," said Snake, nodding. "Yeah, it's me." His head bowed again to avoid her gaze. The Boss found herself looking at that chunk of metal, jutting from his forehead like a horn. A line of stitches tracked their way down his brow.

Snake shook his head, licking dry lips. "No one's called me Jack in years."

The Boss grasped for some rational explanation. This couldn't be real. It was a hallucination, a dream. Maybe Jack had been faster than she'd given him credit for, stuck her with a dart. Slipped her some kind of poison. The Fear had been an expert in those, as well as all the other little ways you could deceive the human mind into believing things that weren't. He had also been all too eager to share his knowledge when asked; a brain starved of oxygen, he had once told her, created the most vivid hallucinations when it was on the verge of death.

Maybe that was it. Her dying dream would be of her last son, old and battered, undone at the sight of her.

Alternatively, between the Afghan sun beating down on them both and the firm earth under her boots, this could be very real. She could really be in Afghanistan, with a Jack years older than the Boss had left him only minutes ago. There were stranger things that could be behind this. "Stranger things on heaven and earth than were dreamt of in your philosophies," as Sorrow might have said. He'd taken a shine to Shakespeare when he was still refining his English.

At the time, a younger Boss had retorted that she preferred to keep her eyes on what was ahead of her. She'd learned since then.

"What are you doing here?" Snake burst out, like he'd finally gotten the courage to ask. "Boss, you've- you've been dead for almost twenty years."

Some part of her had been anticipated this. You didn't get  _that_  look from just any old phantom. But it still settled over her like a chill in the heat. The world tilted like a top under her boots.  _What was going on here?_

The Boss planted her feet. The ground was solid under them. Even in the shade, she could feel perspiration sticking to her skin under the sneaking suit. She had to proceed as though this was, for all intents and purposes, real, until she could return to Tselinoyarsk and she and Jack could finish their mission.

She holstered her Patriot and held out a hand to Snake, just like on the bridge to Russvet - weeks ago to her. Two decades to him.

Snake regarded it with suspicion, the memory clearly on his mind too, and perhaps with longing. He extended his mechanical hand like one meaning to catch a rare butterfly: achingly slow, then lunging forward to snatch her hand from the air and hold it tight.

The Boss yanked him forward.

She heard him gasp in surprise when her other fist flew forward into his gut (a punch she pulled; it was more to see if he was paying attention than anything), only to recoil and bring her elbow down on his. The bones of her arm rang sharply against the metal, but she felt mechanisms bend out of place. Snake didn't even have time to react before her hand was at his throat, bearing him to the ground.

She'd broken that same arm at Russvet, she realized.

She stared into Snake's remaining eye. As blue as it had been yesterday when it quivered and darted under the point of her knife. Snake's eyes were so clear then, you could see right through them and watch his mind work. You could see the purpose. The will. Questioning her, pleading with her,  _“you wouldn't really do it, would you?"_

The Boss could still see the drive there, lighting him like cold embers. But his gaze was somehow clouded now, by years and god only knew what else.

Was it the years? She stared him down, searching, chasing what her intuition whispered was there. Snake made no move to resist.

She found nothing. This didn't satisfy the alarm bell kicking the back of her brain, but she hushed it for now. She'd just been pulled away from her death through history itself, every muscle in her body screaming for a fight. For now, the Boss told herself, she'd put it up to nerves.

Maybe it was just time. Twenty years of being the Boss had sure as hell changed her; why wouldn't it do the same to Snake?

"I didn't die," the Boss stated, and when Snake looked ready to protest, added, "I had planned on it, but obviously that didn't fall through."

Snake's stomach was solid under her knee. The Boss's hand was solid on his throat. Confident that would satisfy them both as to the reality of the situation, the Boss released Snake and stood up. He did too, his left arm hanging loosely. They both regarded it with curiosity.

The Boss knew plenty of people with prosthetic limbs. Ones with manipulatable digits had existed for decades. But Snake flexed his metal fingers without needing his other hand to adjust them. It looked for all the world like he could move it just like his natural hand. This was the first prosthesis the Boss had seen that was so advanced.

There had been talk about such a thing in 1964, of course: science knew nerves were like wires, so why not plug wires into nerves? But then it had been in the development stages at best. When Snake's hand had held his knife, she had seen it curl around the hilt with almost as much precision as his organic one had. When she'd brought her elbow down on it, she felt a hinge of sorts give, not entirely unlike a joint.

She pointed at the arm. "Looks like you've been busy these twenty years."

Snake shrugged and held it up to examine the damage. The movement was shaky and took him a few tries. The elbow joint seemed functional, but there were moments where it extended backwards beyond what it should have been capable of. Snake didn't seem to feel a thing. "It's new," he said simply. "I've been out of action for a while."

He raised his other hand to indicate the horn sticking out of his forehead. "Got this too. Shrapnel, can't take it out without risking serious brain damage."

Snake kept testing the arm. The Boss wondered if it was as much to show off as it was to test its functionality. He curled and uncurled his fingers in a wave.

Again the world seemed to spin off balance. Twenty years. How far could the world come in twenty years?

They stood in silence for a while longer before either of them said anything more, and when they did, it was Snake who spoke first. "I don't know why you're here, but I've got a job to do." He jerked a thumb down the road, opposite the way he'd come from. "Got a friend who needs rescuing." There was a pause before he added, "Ocelot is scouting from the way I came. He's been listening over the radio."

A lot could change in twenty years and now wasn't the time for that story. The meaning was clear: the Boss was literally reflective in her sneaking suit. She nodded. "Will you rendezvous with him once you have the objective?"

Snake nodded back, said only, "we've got a base," and in a fluid, wordless motion, swung off the cloak he wore to ward off the desert heat. He held it out to her. The Boss fastened it on and watched the older Snake climb back on his horse.

He glanced back at her one more time before he rode off, eye looking her up and down as if to make sure she was still really there. "Boss?"

"Yes, Jack?"

A pause.

"It's still good to hear your voice again."

And then he rode off. The Boss allowed herself a small smile as she watched him go.

The cloak only cut down her visibility so much, and she still kept to the shade as much as she could as she crept her way up the hill. She didn't exactly have many other choices out here in the desert, stranded in a strange time - Jack hadn't been lying to her about that, of that much the Boss was sure.

Even though the only person you could trust on the battlefield was yourself. Personal feelings for your comrades could only ever interfere. And don't smoke on missions. Do as I say, Jack, not as I do.

The Boss doubted he was lying about Ocelot, either.

There was another figure on horseback waiting for her among the columns, and they were both silent when they came within earshot of one another. The Boss caught Ocelot's eyes. She knew then there was nothing to say. At some point, he had learned the truth.

The Boss had watched her child grow up in snapshots, issued as threats to fall in line. But even then, it had been hard to believe the brash youth she met at Russvet could ever have been the soft, pink infant she had held all too briefly at Normandy. It was harder to believe that young man was the same as this older one.

Twenty years. That meant it was 1984 and he was nearly her age now. The Boss took in his same red scarf and same red gloves, his graying, receding hairline, and thought with a pang of heartache that Adamska had some of his father in him after all.

 

* * *

 

 

The Sorrow wondered if it was possible for Death to run out of patience. The Cobras were certainly trying to find out.

"To think that  _Death_  of all people can't find someone," The Fury mused aloud. "What the hell kind of skeleton are they hiring for the job these days?"

I WAS NOT HIRED. I AM AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICAT-

"You're a fucking skeleton, is what you are."

-AN ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONFICATION. I'M A MANIFESTATION OF A CONCEPT-

"I KNOW what a motherfucking anthropomorphic personification is!"

"That actually makes it worse," The Pain pointed out. "If you are just a concept, shouldn't you be omnipresent?"

YOU WOULD BE SURPRISED, Death said. He sounded tired, as much as a voice in your head could sound tired. The Sorrow felt for him. UNFORTUNATELY, WHEN YOU INVOLVE THE MULTIVERSE, THINGS CAN GET. COMPLICATED.

"Death's a territorial predator, eh?" said The Fear.

NOT "PREDATOR". I DO NOT HUNT. MERELY STALK.

"So are there other versions of Death in other universes?" The Pain pressed, then turned to address his teammates' noises of confusion. "What? It's the 'many worlds' theory. I enjoy sci-fi in my spare time."

THERE'S QUITE A FEW OF US, ACTUALLY. WE HAVE AN ANNUAL CONVENTION.

"Is there any reason you can't call on some of them?" The Fury sighed. "Anything for the Boss, yes, but a whole damn multiverse sounds beyond our scope. Too much for the Cobras alone."

I AM WORKING ON IT.

"Want to work on it a little fucking faster?"

In the hood of his cloak, Death's blue eye glimmered. The Sorrow held his breath - out of instinct more than anything, what with being his unfortunate case of being dead.

THIS IS NOT AN EASY CASE TO HANDLE. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS AT STAKE HERE.

"Is the fate of the world in the balance once more?" said The Pain. He was starting to sound excited, a far cry from the quiet man the Sorrow had known twenty years ago.

I'M AFRAID THAT'S WHAT IT MIGHT TURN OUT TO BE.

"So much for resting before the great unknown." said The Fury. End nodded and let out a small sigh. "What in the hell do you need us for, then? Losing your touch?"

Death took a step forward, drawing his scythe. IF IT IS RESPITE THAT YOU WANT, I CAN SEND YOU BACK.

"Wait," Sorrow stepped forward, raising a hand to throw between the Fury and the seven foot tall skeleton. Death swung.

 

"He's al/             been-"

               /ways

 

He stopped. Fury had stumbled backwards, but Death had stopped feet from him. You could  _hear_  the scythe blade humming as it squished through the air.

YES. I THINK THAT OUGHT TO DO IT.

"What the FUCK did you do?" Fury's hand scrabbled at his chest, which was surprisingly free of any fatal wounds. Or double-fatal wounds. That was an interesting question, could a soul be killed "again"?

I WOULD EXPLAIN, BUT YOU SEEM TO FEEL IT IS "BEYOND YOUR SCOPE".

"What the fuck did you do to me, you dried up, calcified-"

Now the other Cobras stepped in to hold the Fury back, not least because Death was raising the scythe again.

"If y/         think th/         go/        to scare us a/

        /ou                 /at's       /ing                        /way,

you don't know the Cobras," Fear hissed, though his graying hair seemed to bristle as he crouched between Fury and Death. Sorrow could hear again the curious thing the swings of the scythe did to the air. The blade was so sharp, it could cut through sound.

FRIGHTEN YOU? NO, NO. MERELY GIVING YOU A WAY TO GET AROUND. I THINK YOU'LL FIND IT TERRIFICALLY CONVENIENT. Death took another step back and revealed another lifetimer from the interior of his cloak. Unlike the Boss's, this one was more ornate, with carved wooden columns encircling glass. You could pick out the forms of predators, of snakes and spiders in them. The top bulb was entirely empty of sand.

Death flipped the hourglass over, and the Fear vanished.

RELAX, Death said to the shocked Cobras. He began rummaging in his cloak again. HE IS FINE. IN FACT, HE'LL BE DOING CONSIDERABLY WELL FOR SOMEONE WHO'S MORTAL COIL WAS BLOWN TO SMITHEREENS. Another lifetimer with an empty top bulb was revealed, this one enclosed with thin beams of stainless steel. The name at the base was written in Cyrillic.

"Wait just a damn minute-" said Fury, but Death flipped it over and he too disappeared from Sorrow's limbo.

"What exactly happens at a convention for Grim Reapers?" The Pain asked in a terse voice as Death pulled out his lifetimer. This one was wrapped in twine at the bases, giving it the appearance of a hornet's nest.

Death shrugged. A DEALER'S HALL FOR EQUIPMENT. PHOTO OPS. CONTESTS FOR BEST CLOAK AND SCYTHE. PANELS OF DISCUSSION. A RAVE. THE THINGS THAT HAPPEN AT MOST CONVENTIONS, I SUPPOSE. And he flipped it over, and the Pain was gone.

The End had been quiet throughout this ordeal. If he hadn't been standing, The Sorrow would've thought he was asleep. His eyes emerged from the recesses of his wrinkles when Death revealed a massive hourglass, easily twice the size of the other Cobras'.

THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS MARGINALLY LESS DIFFICULT, said Death.

The End wheezed with laughter. "They're young, it's likely the first time they've seen you up close."

THAT'S SURPRISING. I WAITED FOR AGES AROUND THE REMAINS OF THAT DAMN FLYING MACHINE AFTER ILYA NEARLY BURNED UP IN THE ATMOSPHERE. SPACE SHUTTLES. YOU CAN KEEP THEM. I'LL STICK TO MY HORSE, THANKS.

"Still riding Binkie, then?"

HE IS AS PROUD A STEED AS EVER. I MIGHT'VE LENT HIM TO YOU, BUT. Death made a gesture with his hands that communicated very clearly how much he trusted the other Cobras with the animal.

The End smiled. "Say hi to your granddaughter for me."

CAN DO. DON'T THINK YOU'RE GETTING TO USE ALL OF THIS AGAIN, THOUGH. Death tapped the sand in the enormous bottom bulb. Then he flipped The End's hourglass, and Sorrow was left alone with the reaper.

Death turned his attention to him. Sorrow felt a shudder go through his spine when he saw the skull sitting unsupported on top of its spinal column. He had spoken with the dead all his life, but never the one who took them to the other side. This... this was new to him. He realized then he was still holding the Boss's frozen lifetimer.

KEEP IT, Death said when Sorrow made to hand it back. I'VE CUT OFF THE BINDS THAT KEEP YOU IN SPACE AND TIME, SO YOU WILL NEED AN ANCHOR TO FOLLOW HER BY. BRING HER BACK. LET FATE TAKE ITS COURSE.

He floundered for something to say. The blue pinprick of light in Death's eye socket was getting to him. "She's never been one to believe in destiny."

NEITHER AM I. BUT HER DEATH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE. YOU AND I BOTH KNOW THIS.

Sorrow sighed. Of course it was; the current of it had been moving him for weeks. "How sad..."

IT IS WHAT IT IS. Death's eye flashed again. DON'T TRY ANYTHING. I AM TRUSTING YOU WITH HER LIFE FOR A REASON, ONE THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HUMAN SENTIMENTALITY.

"Because I understand death? In the conceptual sense, not." Sorrow gestured at the seven-foot-tall skeleton. "You."

THAT'S PART OF IT. WE ARE MEDDLING WITH CAUSALITY HERE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ROCKET SCIENCE?

"Not especially well."

GOOD. THIS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. THIS IS HARDER.

Sorrow was about to question the Grim Reaper's use of human colloquialism when a warm breeze ruffled the hair on the back of his neck. He saw Death glancing over his shoulder before he turned around to look. Suddenly, his river had a new shore. A field of white flowers rolled serenely under a gust of wind, blowing away the rain in golden sunshine.

LIKE I SAID, CAUSALITY IS HARDER. I BELIEVE THAT'S FOR YOU. GO. I'LL WAIT.

 

* * *

 

 

Snake managed to get out "the Boss is gone," and about half the explanation that no, he didn't mean  _that_ kind of gone, when the plane rocked. Eva grit her teeth as she clenched the controls in a vice grip to keep the craft in the air. Something came screaming alongside the WIG.

_"SNAKE!"_

"The hell!?" Eva glanced out the window and they both caught a glimpse of Major Ocelot as he bobbed in and out of sight on one of those hovering platforms.

"WE'RE NOT DONE YET!"

"The kid doesn't give up." But Snake said it with a bit of a smile. Ocelot's tenacity had become a weird kind of normal since he’d landed in Russia.  

Ocelot crashed into the side of the aircraft, blowing the door off its hinges. Unfortunately for him, in this universe, Snake was not only in no mood to play. He'd also come prepared.

"Come on," he groaned, rolling to his feet and seeing Snake aiming a pistol at him. "That's hardly sportsmanlike."

"We're a little busy right now," Snake said, and pulled the trigger on the tranq gun.

"It feels like he damaged one of the engines," Eva called as the young Major stumbled. He was coming towards Snake, hands raised like a drunk bar fighter. Trying to resist the effects of the sedative, but Snake had aimed well. Ocelot collapsed before he could throw a punch.

"Snake, we might be too heavy to clear the mountains!"

"What do you want me to do?" Snake said, grabbing the downed Ocelot. He was still struggling for consciousness, but it was child's play to roll him onto his stomach and pull his hands behind his back. "I can't just toss him overboard, the MiGS are on their way."

"He's the enemy!"

"He's a kid."

Snake could _hear_ Eva rolling her eyes, but she didn't protest. He yanked off Ocelot's scarf, tying it tight around his wrists. Ocelot mumbled some indistinct protest, or maybe something about either of them enjoying the rough treatment. Who knew.

"Snake, I think I'm gonna need a hand here!" Eva shouted over the sound of blaring alarms.

"Be right there." He looked back at the downed Ocelot. His face was twisted in what Snake could best describe as exhausted impudence as he began to slip into sleep. Like a child who'd worn themselves out with a tantrum. Honestly, he felt almost bad. There was no denying it; enemy or not, he  _liked_  Ocelot.

But his mission wasn't finished. He had to figure this Boss thing out, and that necessitated he figure out not crashing the plane.

Snake secured Ocelot with the tightest bind he could and stood up. "Sorry, but I've got a job to do."

 

* * *

 

 

"'Boss'," said Adamska, rolling the word around as he said it.  "Long time, no see."

His English was flawless, though that shouldn't have surprised her. It was just that she had only ever heard him speaking Russian at Groznjy Grad. Now Ocelot's voice was deeper, an easy drawl, with a hint of the American South in it.

He slid off his horse as the Boss crested the hill and stood in front of it. A white Andalusian, she noted. He'd kept the spurs, too. A real cowboy at last.

"And I last saw you an hour ago," the Boss said, noting how he sauntered towards her and attempting to head off any more theatrics. "You were chasing a CIA dog out into the jungle in a motorbike."

"And you were leveling Groznyj Grad with a Davey Crockett. In that same sneaking suit, too. It's funny how time flies, you've hardly aged a day." Ocelot spoke as though this were just any other chance encounter, running into an old friend on the street, and not your war criminal mother coming back from the dead.

"I think you'll find I haven't." She was hardly in the mood. The Boss hadn't  _planned_  for this. She was supposed to die, and here she was listening to a man she had to believe was her grown son be a wiseass about this whole impossible situation. World War III would start if she wasn't a corpse by sundown, and yet Jack's reaction was iron-clad proof that she  _had_  died and  _she had not planned for this._

"Heard the whole thing," said Ocelot, tapping the piece in his ear. He came closer, his eyes scanning over her, spurs jingling as he walked. "You gave Snake quite the turnaround. Honestly, I thought I was seeing things too for a minute there."

The Boss put out a hand. Sure, she could go for round two. "I gave Snake a demonstration to the contrary. You want one?"

To her surprise, Ocelot laughed. For a moment, his serious expression perked up into a chuckle, and you could see the ghost of his father in him. "I'll pass. Chopper's coming, and I think Snake would want you to come back with us."

Of course he would. The Jack she knew would stay by her side forever if he could. "I don't doubt it, but you'll remember I'm a traitor slated for execution."

"Who was dealt with twenty years ago and now rests in Arlington Cemetery, under a headstone with no name. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you're an old story."

Chopper blades sliced through the air. The Boss stared at him as Ocelot watched a helo approach from the blue sky.

"Come on," he said, nodding towards it. "Unless you've got some other arrangements for your little detour?"

He had her there. Even if she refused and struck out on her own, she'd be dead inside of a few days unless she wandered her way to civilization. And god knew what would happen then. She might have been counting on her own death, but it couldn’t be allowed to happen like that.

Only here, she was already dead. Jack had not been lying to her.

"Even if I do," the Boss said, the helo circling their location now, "I'll only be facing a firing squad."

Ocelot gave her a knowing smirk that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Now who said anything about going back to the States?"

He had the Andalusian Fulton lifted for later pick-up ("expect to see this happen a lot," he had said), and had the Boss introduced to the perplexed pilots as "an old friend of the Boss's." They asked no further questions, given no suspicious stares. The man at the controls just put up a hand and said, "an ally of the Boss is an ally of ours."

Ocelot had then looked to her to see if she needed the clarification; she did not. This Snake had survived and carried on the title, just as the Boss said he must.

They didn't speak for most of the ride. Ocelot kept up with Snake over the radio, and the Boss, for the most part, sat and listened.

"This sounds like a lot of rookie advice." It was a probe more than a statement. Ocelot had been talking Snake through the basics of stealth infiltration, about not being spotted, opportunities for snagging intel. The sort of things that didn’t fade after you left the field. "Snake told me he'd been out of action for a while, but he wouldn't forget everything he'd been taught."

Ocelot's eyes flicked up from the map he was reading.

"'A while' is putting it lightly."

The Boss narrowed her eyes. "What happened?"

"There was... an incident." He waved a hand, gathering the tale into an abridged form. Or maybe just deciding what was safe to tell her. "An American special agent went rogue, turned on him. Wiped out almost his entire unit, nearly got him and the man Snake's in to rescue. His name's Kazuhira Miller, goes by Kaz, he was Snake's XO. In the chaos, Snake got caught in the blast, and... well, he's been out of action for nine years since that day. In a coma, specifically, up until some few weeks ago."

The Boss's memory threw up a bullet screaming along the side of her head. Freefalling towards the surface of the ocean like a burning comet, throwing her backwards into oblivion. And then, eyes that opened but wouldn't focus while she was left curled up in the back of her own mind, small and weak. She winced in sympathy. Back then, she'd only been out for a few months, and had needed at least as much time to recover, fighting her own body for control every step of the way. No wonder Snake had looked so ground down.

"Injuries like that and he's back in the field after a few  _weeks?"_  It had been one thing after the Virtuous Mission, but after a  _nine year_  coma? He was down an entire arm, for Christ's sake.

"Toughest son of a bitch I know," said Ocelot, and the Boss thought she could see something in his expression. Not quite pride and not quite sadness. "And you made him that way."

Their words settled back into the beat of the chopper blades. They echoed in the Boss's head,  _"you made him a soldier,"_  while Ocelot worked. He flipped out some gadget that the Boss at first assumed was his radio, until he clicked a button and a layer of light materialized in front of it. It resolved into a copy of the map, a variety of icons layers on top of it. One in the center was moving steadily away from a cluster of red dots.

Twenty years, huh?

"Looks like we're going to be here awhile," the Boss said, probing into the rest of those twenty years. "Tell me something, Ocelot. To me, it was 1964 a few hours ago, and I last saw your unit tearing out into the jungle to hunt Snake down. Now you're his friend?"

He turned back to face her, and again, for just a second, the Boss thought she could see...  _something_  in his expression before it vanished into his calm storm. "It's hardly impossible," Ocelot said. "No such thing as an absolute enemy."

The Boss nodded, recognizing her own words. "I'm not doubting the possibility," not when, for god's sake, wasn’t she asking the child she'd conceived with a Russian operative? "Just interested in how it came about."

Ocelot stole another glance out the window as the chopper blew through a bank of clouds. "We have common interests."

"I take it your rivalry didn't last long after you reported back to the CIA."

The Sorrow's smile bloomed again, for just a moment. "You made me promise. So when Zero put his plans to use the Philosopher's Legacy into motion, Snake and I found ourselves on the same side. For your dream."

Ocelot nodded his head at the Boss. Holding his shrewd gaze making something tighten deep in her chest. Pride.

"Then if we're not going back to America, where  _are_ we going?"

"Oh, you'll see."

The first thing the Boss saw when she stepped out of the chopper was dazzling sunlight, reflecting off miles of ocean. She winced as her eyes adjusted from hours of the helo's dim cabin.

The Boss cast her gaze around, taking in the fresh orange paint of the towering complex in front of her. Tarps were hung off the blocky shapes of buildings in progress, cranes perched on the edge of the platform like giant sea birds. It was a concrete and steel island out in the middle of the sea.

"Boss," said Ocelot, standing beside her and sweeping a hand out. "Welcome to Mother Base."

"An off-shore sea fort," she observed. It reminded her of the Maunsell Forts off the coast of England, though she hadn't heard of any being built since the end of World War II. As far as she knew, there wasn't a way to justify the logistics involved. You'd need to ship in rations, fresh water, medical supplies, fuel, munitions. You'd need a way to generate power, and this far from mainland support, if something went wrong, support could be hours away. "And it's... how far from land?"

"We're off the coast of Seychelles." The Boss took notice of how Ocelot avoided answering the question. "Miller calls the unit 'Diamond Dogs', and we take operations wherever they need to go."

"Under who's orders?"

"It's a joint team, multi-national. Bit like the Cobras, really."

"By who's authority?" the Boss repeated, more forcefully.

Was there just a second of hesitation, or was she imagining things? "America, mostly, sometimes the UK. Others too, but they mostly come through those two sources. The world is still divided into East and West, 'Boss', and the Soviets fight it through proxies. So too does the West."

Twenty years and the Cold War still smoldered on. One person could only do so much against a world divided, she supposed.

Ocelot's question came from a distance.  "What do you want to do?"

The Boss had watched the world change from the trenches and from orbit. She had seen the divisions in East and West rise when the Philosophers had dismantled her unit. Loyalty to her country had been her guiding light then, and it had shone for her right up until the very end. But proxy wars were no place for loyalty. She had seen it coming; the Space Race, politics, herself and her Cobras and her son, all just pieces in a game between two superpowers. Why would it not escalate to consume entire countries?

She had accepted her role in it; she was a bygone of an old era, obsolete. She would only be free of her duty when she was no longer useful. Then she would be discarded, and nothing she nor Jack nor anyone could do could change that.

She had been ready for it. She had even begun to welcome it.

But something - or perhaps, someone - changed her fate.

"Boss?"

She wasn't "The Boss" anymore here, was she? That person had died twenty years ago. What place did she have here, in this scene in 1984?

Ocelot was watching her.

"I've got no doubt you'd be welcome here, and we need all the manpower we can get. What do you want to do?"

It took her a moment to figure out how to answer that one. After stepping through time from that field of lilies, things had just... happened. The Boss had kept moving until coming to a stop here in front of Mother Base. There was no plan for this - how could there be? You couldn't plan for something like this.

Here, she was dead and buried. Her final mission was complete, but it had brought her no peace. She would have to decide, in a world that had moved on without her and that she knew nothing about.

There was no mission here.

No - there was one. For her, there was always one.

The Boss spoke slowly, turning to Ocelot. "You realize I have no clue how the hell I came to be here, or why."

He nodded, and she continued, stepping close. "But as long as I'm alive, what choice do I have but to fight?"

"But for what?"

She paused. She had only one answer.

"For the future."

Ocelot smiled at her. "Then welcome to the Diamond Dogs, Boss."

 

* * *

 

 

Snake wasn't a huge fan of fiction. He was even less of a fan of spy fiction. Sure, Zero could go on about how 007 was based off a real person (whom he and the Boss had actually met, if the guy who thought he'd been abducted by aliens was to be believed), but stories tended to gloss over the bloody, sweaty reality of the job. It struck him as patronizing.

Take now, for example. Real life did not cut from the daring escape to the afterglow of victory. No, first you had the eight-hour flight in-between, in this case with one engine down, one door broken off, and one unconscious GRU Major weighing you down, where at any moment Russian air control might decide to phone in with some inconvenient questions. Or the MiGs might change their mind about showing up as mysteriously as they did the first time.

Snake and Eva had heard an explosion behind the WIG soon after clearing the mountain range. Snake had stuck his head out of the broken door and seen plumes of smoke flying up behind them with no bombers to be found. They decided to put it up to a stroke of luck.

"How are you holding up?" Snake asked, shifting in the co-pilot's seat to get to his food pack. Eva had been flying for about four hours, and she might've been awake for... who knew how long. Snake had never actually seen her put her head down. She glanced at him, a hand unconsciously falling to the wound on her hip.

"Alright, all things considered," she sighed. "I'll be fine, don't worry about me."

Snake found what he was looking for and held it out to her: a package of instant noodles. Eva made a face. "Here. Airline food. You said you liked them, right?"

"Do you see a stove in here?" she laughed. "Thanks, Snake, but I'll be fine until we land. Besides, you promised me dinner, and I expect something fancier than noodles."

"Suit yourself." He shrugged and tore the package open, biting into the brick of dried noodles with a loud crunch.

Eva looked horrified. "What are you doing!?"

Snake paused in chewing on the brittle pasta. "What's it look like?"

"Snake, you're supposed to cook them first!"

"Never stopped me. Besides, you said it yourself, no stove in here."

"Have you been eating the noodles dry all this time??"

"Yeah?" Snake looked at her quizzically as he crunched off another bite. Eva stared at him a moment longer before shaking her head and turning her attention back to the air. The open door forced them to fly low. That combined with the craft's affiliation should hopefully ensure smooth sailing.

Snake was partway through sorting his equipment when he heard Ocelot stirring. There was an intake of breath that signaled a sleeper coming to wakefulness. When they both peeked at him, he was laying still, but Snake could see small twitches of his limbs as Ocelot sussed out what mobility his captors had left him with.

"Are we really gonna haul him all the way back to the States?" Eva asked, eyeing Ocelot warily.

"Maybe?" Snake just shrugged, keeping watch over Ocelot when Eva turned back to the wheel. "Who knows, maybe they'll want him for intel. If not, we can drop him at the border."

He didn't want Ocelot dead unless it came to that. The kid had guts, brains, and a hell of a lot of talent. What had Eva told him over the radio once, that he was the son of a legend? Maybe Para-Medic was onto something, and skills like theirs really did run in the blood. Ocelot had trained with the best his countrymen had to offer, his age and his arrogance his only real weak points. If someone like, say, the Boss had been around to beat him into deflating his head a little, he could easily live up to his family name, whatever it was. Killing him when it wasn't necessary wouldn't just be a waste of life. It'd be a waste of a rare gem.

Maybe "enemy" was a relative term after all. And the last thing the CIA needed right now was to kick up a fuss by abducting a Russian soldier.

Ocelot was definitely awake now, though it'd take time for him to be fully operational. Snake had seen soldiers he'd tranq'd lurch around like zombies after being roused, and had even been shot a few times himself in training. Those darts hit you like a bad hangover. He watched, interested to see how Ocelot would handle it. A bleary blue eye cracked open at him, and made something twinge in the back of his mind.

Finding his hands securely bound, Ocelot was now struggling to loosen the knots tied in his scarf. It wasn't the best of improvised ropes, being soft and made of a fabric that slid easily. Snake had twisted it into a loose cord to compensate for this when he'd tied Ocelot's wrists, removed his gloves so he couldn't take advantage by slipping the extra layer. But it might be possible, with enough wriggling, to gain precious centimeters of space in the bind. Ocelot was definitely making a go of it. He was moving subtly to try and mask the attempt, which wouldn't do much good with how closely Snake was now watching to try and identify the detail he was missing.

Ocelot caught Snake's eye and glared. Snake just smirked. "All's fair."

The sound made Eva look behind her again. "You might wanna-"

"On it." Snake stood up. Ocelot, anticipating what he was about to do, began scrambling to his feet - but he was still doped up. Sluggish. It was easy to take him back to the floor. "You have anything I can get his feet with?"

"Not on me, no. What about your crotch-straps?"

"My  _what?_ "

"Those straps you've got down your chest. What, you want me to call them something else?”

"They keep my gear on, tying him with those puts him way too close to weapons for my liking."

"Damnit!" Ocelot barked, thrashing underneath him. Snake had a knee in Ocelot's back, one hand putting the rest of his weight on the back of his neck. He felt skinnier than Snake had been expecting. "What's the matter, Snake, afraid to face me?"

No, tying his ankles wasn't it. He was forgetting something else. Now it was bothering him and he was trying to juggle figuring it out, running down the essential points of taking an enemy captive, and improvising another bind all at the same time. The instructions on the subject ran through his head in the Boss's voice.

"What about your headband?" came Eva's suggestion, cutting through all the  _"Remember, Jack"_ 's.

"Huh? My headband?"

"Yeah, that bandana. Do you... ever take that thing off?"

Snake kept his eyes on Ocelot, thinking of the Boss chiding him for keeping it at the beginning of all this. He did not move to take it off.

"It... well," Snake mumbled, very aware of Ocelot's cold blue gaze on him, "it was hers."

There was a hanging “gotcha…” before Eva let the subject drop.

"Hang on," she added, "I think I've got an idea. Can you hold the controls for a bit?"

"Just a second." Snake was distracted. Ocelot's staring had him. It was here. It was right on the tip of his tongue. He checked the knots on Ocelot's wrists - no, that wasn't it either, they were solid.

His bandana. The Boss's bandana. He had caught it in his grip and it had slid off her head just as she'd thrown him over the edge of the bridge. Snake had caught her eyes for just a moment then. Blue. Glaring like a knife's edge.

Ocelot, who was glaring at him now. With his blond hair and blue eyes, a permanently stern gaze and proud cheekbones. A Major at nineteen because he was the son of some legendary hero. 

It clicked.

Snake sat frozen on top of Ocelot, transfixed by the familiar features. He saw Ocelot's face without really seeing it.

"Eva," he said, drawing out her name the same way one would when faced with a hungry Tyrannosaurus.

"Back in the cave, what was it you said about Ocelot's parents?"

"What?”

Snake licked his lips, remembering her words speaking soothingly in his ear as he groped his way through the cool darkness.

"You said he's the son of 'some legendary hero', right?"

"Yeah," Eva said, "he is."

"And he was born, where?"

"On the battlefield, yeah."

Snake's heart hammered and his words picked up speed. "And his mother was shot-"

"Was shot in the gut during battle."

"No word on his father, but they said she had a scar-"

"-she had a scar, shaped like a-" 

Even Ocelot had gone quiet as the realization crashed over him.

"Oh my god," Snake said.

Eva whipped her head around at them. "What??"

"The Boss, she had the-" Snake traced the rough shape of old wound across his own chest, mind slamming back into gear. "The scar, shaped like a snake!! She told me- I wasn't even thinking about it at the time, but he-  _she-_ " The implication didn't so much dawn as streak past like bullets, too fast for words.

In a few thousand other universes, this would have occurred to Snake in a few weeks’ time. He would reflect on his memories of this day and think bitterly on yet another cruel twist of fate. Alcohol might be involved. In this one, though, he was on fire. Snake was reduced to furious gesticulating to try and get across his sudden revelation. He caught Eva's wide eyes and jabbed at the young man under his grasp.

"I mean, look at him! He's got the glare! I  _know_  that glare!"

Ocelot piped up. "What the hell are you going on about?" he asked, sounding more resigned than anything.

Finally, Snake had a firm enough grasp on the concept to throw it out into the open.

_"She's your mother!"_

And there it was. The grand, unspoken thing. Tearing the bedsheet off the pachyderm, as it were.

For an unbroken minute, there was only the sounds the WIG and the rushing air.

"She slapped me," Ocelot said flatly.

"You deserved it," Eva cut in before Snake could say anything the Boss's preferred teaching methods.

"Yeah, you kinda did." His dead eye made him agree.

"I'd have hit you harder if I wasn't committed to the role," Eva went on. Ocelot rolled his eyes.

Snake glanced down at him again. The Boss's son. He could see it clear as day now, Ocelot had her proud disdain down pat.

Did Ocelot know? Had Volgin known? Had  _she?_  Did the Boss know what the Philosophers had done with her child? She had to, right? To think that the Boss was unaware of her lost son when he was right under her nose...

Snake had no family of his own. He couldn't even imagine what losing kin, and knowing they might still be out there in the world, must feel like. But the idea that the Boss might've reunited with him on this mission? And didn't, either by chance or by design? Seemed unthinkably cruel.

Moving slowly to not give Ocelot an opening, Snake went for his radio. Zero had to know about this. They couldn't just leave him.

The plane bucked again.

Eva swore loudly from the pilot's chair, looking up. Ocelot grunted as Snake was thrown off balance on top of him.

Two weights had struck the top of the WIG.

 

* * *

 

 

METAL GEAR SAGA  
Paradox Backlash

Ch. 1 "Your Circuit's Dead, There's Something Wrong"

 

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY

Gill J. "geejaysmith" Smith

 

STARRING

The Cobra Unit  
The Boss (Lori Alan)  
Naked Snake (David Hayter)  
EVA (Suzetta Miñet)  
Punished "Venom" Snake (Kiefer Sutherland)  
Revolver "Shalashaska" Ocelot (Troy Baker)  
Major "Revolver" Ocelot (Josh Keaton) 

 

FEATURING

Death (Christopher Lee)  
Operation Snake Eater Radio Support  
Diamond Dogs


	2. Criminal, Criminal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: If you're reading this, it means you've endured the first round of nonsense and are back for more! Thanks! Get ready for even *more* nonsense. 
> 
> Some quick notes I will expound upon at the end of the chapter:
> 
>   * There's pictures now. Didn't have time to finish all the ones I wanted to for chapter one and two, but sit tight, they'll get done and online eventually. 
>   * Given the scenario Team Snake and the Cobras are in versus the Boss, Tone Whiplash is something I'll keep an eye out for but that we're just all gonna have to deal with. 
>   * Certain video game conventions are being interpreted literally and this will be relevant to the narrative. 
>   * Given the dearth of canonical information about the Cobras, a lot of their characterization is synthesized from fanwork, which I'll namedrop in the end notes. 
>   * I've cleaned up the tags somewhat. I'll be making notes of changes made.
> 

> 
> Tags added: Illustrated fic  
> Tags removed: Canon-Typical Fourth Wall Breaking, Canon Typical Psychological Trauma, Canon-Typical Approach to how reality works

Someone swung through the WIG's open door. Snake fired, squeezing off two shots from his .45. With a ring of metal, they rebounded off the flat side of a broadsword.

The gunfire had been warning shots, but the sword had caught the rounds and sent them spinning out into the wind. Its wielder looked like he could be CIA. Dark sunglasses, dark suit, holding the broadsword onehanded while the other flipped out a badge. 

"Agent Darksmith, Time Cops," the stranger said. "You're wanted for questioning regarding a recent temporal anomaly."

Before Snake could say anything, another agent dropped into the cabin from the top of the fuselage. This one was a young woman, in the same dark suit and glasses as her counterpart, distinguished from him by a bright red tie. It was the same color as the curly hair brushing her shoulders. It looked like every angle on her ended in a sharp point.

"Darksmith? Really??" the woman cackled. The noise hit the ears like a shiv. "What happened to 'Agent Snoop Dogg'?"

Darksmith turned to look at her as she doubled over in laughter. The second he took his eyes off Snake, quick as a whip, his partner had a gun aimed at him and Ocelot. She had a grin that seemed to split her face in two, and Snake realized that he hadn't just imagined her as sharp. Her teeth were actually filed into points.

"I really should not have to explain to you why I'm not going to drop my ass into 1964 and tell these people I'm called 'Snoop Dogg'," said Darksmith, not bothered at all by the fact he'd just dropped his guard when a gun was still pointed at him. "Besides, what did you come up with?"

The woman's grin turned cocky. With her gun held steady, she smacked Darksmith on the shoulder with her free hand. Darksmith hastily brought his sword back up.

"Agent Saphira. Time Cops," she said, taking out her own badge.

It might've looked like a police badge from a distance, but there was no department listed on it. Instead, it was engraved with a complete pattern of gears, like someone had stamped the interior of a clock onto it.

Her gun trained back on Snake and Ocelot - no, guns, plural, one in each of her hands. Snake, for the life of him, couldn't tell where she'd pulled them from.

Saphira began to saunter out of his line of sight, towards the cockpit. Snake's eye locked back onto Darksmith. "Time travelers, huh?"

Eva had one of the SSAs on her, but she also needed to focus on keeping the plane in the air. Ocelot was still on the ground, hands tied, hung over from the tranq dart. There was no telling how useful he'd be in a fight in that state.

Darksmith stepped away from the open door and lowered the blade toward Snake's face. "Quick on the uptake."

"You weren't exactly subtle," Snake pointed out. Stuck in his crouched position, he took in Darksmith's stance, and the bright edge angled at him. "That, and I can't think of an average person who'd bring a knife that big to a gun fight."

The agent didn't so much shrug as jerk his head. "What can I say, I don't like guns."

"To each his own." Snake braced himself. "But if you ask me, there's nothing quite like the feeling of a long silver bullet slamming into-"

The sound of the SSA's hammer pulling back triggered him to move. Darksmith looked away for a second and Snake was pulling the trigger, ducking away from the broadsword's edge-

It was like a film reel skipping frames. Everyone moved in ways that shouldn't have been possible in that space of time.

Snake's head hit the wall with a thud and a sick ringing. A cold line of steel froze against his throat. As his vision swam back into focus, Snake could see Ocelot was propped up against the back of the co-pilot's chair, Eva's revolver was halfway across the cabin at his feet, and Snake himself was several feet away from where he had started, pinned by Darksmith's sword.

"You're welcome to try that again!" called Saphira, who now had both her guns trained on Eva's head. "Who knows? Might be fun."

"Yeah, no. Blondie there almost took a tumble out the door." Darksmith indicated Ocelot. "Who the hell flies like this, anyway?"

"Blame Blondie for that," Eva called, her voice tight.

"You people must live interesting lives... whatever, what we're gonna do-"

Agent Saphira's voice cut across Darksmith's, cold and sharp as a knife. "All we're gonna do is ask a couple of questions. I would recommend putting the plane down first."

"You here to ask about the Boss?" Snake grunted, Adam's apple bobbing against the sword's edge.

"Who?" Darksmith cocked his head, his brow furrowing in genuine puzzlement.

"The _Boss_ , the living legend that won World War II for the Allies!" Raising his voice made the back of his head ache and chilled the cold line across his throat. Darksmith, mercifully, pulled the blade back just enough that Snake felt he could speak without slicing himself open.

"I have zero idea who that is."

"The hell do you mean 'ask about the Boss'?" Ocelot interjected, recovering from his second stupor of the day.

"How do you not know who the Boss is?" Snake went on.

"There's a lot of people in a lot of universes."

"Did she vanish?" Saphira cut in.

"I mean- yeah, just- disappeared, into thin air."

"Notice anything else strange? Any, say, mysterious earthquakes or unexplained phenomena?"

"Like glitched electronics?"

"Anything else?"

"Like about five or more guys charring a whole field of bodies?" added Darksmith.

"Agent Darksmith, that is classified information!"

"Charred bodies?" said Snake.

"Yeah, the whole place was torched."

Saphira groaned. "Goddamnit, Darksmith."

Snake pressed on. "Bombed by the MiGs?"

"The fuck is a MiG?"

"The jets that were crashed about a mile off," Saphira sighed.

"Who was killed?"

Darksmith just shrugged. "Not my job to find out."

"We're only here to make sure this little mishap doesn't leave too big a body count on-site," said Saphira. "Probably nothing serious, maybe a minor dimensional rift. Who knows! Maybe the one in Cardiff DW9-2005 got her. Happens to people all the time."

"I thought DW9 only pulled from its universal locality?"

"Shut up, Darksmith, there's a first time for everything."

Ocelot's gaze was silently demanding answers when Snake looked at him, and he hoped it was clear on his face that he didn't know either.

"Well, we answered your questions," said Eva. "Anything else? We're all on the clock here!"

"Nope, we're gonna have to take you all into the station!" Agent Saphira said, and you could _hear_ the shark-toothed grin in her voice. "Not to worry, though. If all goes well, we'll get you back without a second wasted."

"Don't wanna have to clean up a bigger fucking mess," grumbled Darksmith.

"Now how about landing this plane?"

Snake heard Eva growl back, "Gimme a sec, I think I see a field that looks flat enough."

"And trust me," keeping on gun on Eva, Saphira went for something in her pocket - did she flick the pistol into her sleeve? - and pulled out something that looked like a top, only flat and triangular and constructed of intricate rings of gears, "we will know if you try anything."

Ocelot was staring at Snake again, inscrutable. His eyes flicked to Agent Darksmith, then to the revolver on the floor, and back to Snake.

Snake shook his head as imperceptibly as he could, the steel edge of Darksmith's sword biting into his neck. _We don't know what they're capable of._

As the WIG dipped out of the sky, Snake felt dimly the thrill in the belly that came with free fall. These two were time travelers. The woman was probably more dangerous than her partner, especially if you got out of the range of the sword. They might have just been able to move faster than any normal human should be able to, but more likely they could do something to time.

Snake stared at Darksmith. He could feel the man staring back underneath the black sunglasses. Pressed hard between Darksmith's hand and the hilt of the sword, Snake noticed, was a pocket watch. The chain was wound tight around his palm, disappearing up the sleeve of his suit jacket.

The WIG dipped to the ground. The broadsword was around a yard long, and Darksmith had him on the last twelve inches or so. He could open his jugular with just a flex of his arms.

Snake pulled one leg in, tucking it closer to his chest. Darksmith quirked an eyebrow at him and pressed the sword back into his flesh. Snake saw him adjust the weight of it, so he could press a thumb to the catch of the pocket watch.

There was a jolt as the WIG touched down. Out of the corner of his eye, Snake saw Ocelot shift. As Eva rolled the plane to a halt, Snake watched the agent, waiting. He'd only have a split second.

Ocelot sprang to his feet. He had a hand free. For just an instant, Darksmith looked away, and Snake threw his heel into the man's knee. Both men dropped, and Snake rolled, springing into towards him, twisting the sword out of Darksmith's hands, and seizing upon the pocket watch. Darksmith cried out, his hand twisting as the chain constricted, then snapped.

Snake danced away to the middle of the cabin, spinning on his heel as he went, saw Agent Saphira raising her pistol, and on a reflex, slammed a finger onto the pocket watch’s catch.

The world froze.

Snake dropped, waiting for the gunshot from Saphira, but it never came. She, Ocelot and Darksmith were still as photographs.

Snake advanced on Ocelot, waving a hand in front of his face when the man didn't respond. Ocelot had been caught in the middle of pulling a knife on the Darksmith, crouching for the gun. His eyes didn't even move.

The rapport of gunfire rang out, and the bullet pinged off the cabin's ceiling. Snake saw the round freeze in midair when he whirled around back to Saphira, drawing his own gun.

"Oh, I like this one," she said to no one in particular. Her free hand was twirling the outmost layer of her gadget, which spun freely without moving the inner layers of gears. "Relax, would you? You're no foreign anomaly, so I'd need permission to shoot to kill."

She advanced on him, her lips seeming to stretch wider and wider to reveal an impossible amount of sharp teeth. Her mirrored sunglasses made her eyes like pits. Crouching, Snake backed up, keeping the sights on her. Agent Saphira was far less concerned, sauntering as her free hand kept spinning her gadget.

"Of course," she said, "it's always better to ask forgiveness than permission."

"What do you want us for?" Snake snapped. "My objective is to find the Boss before the Cold War goes hot. You know what that means, right?"

Saphira threw up a nonchalant hand. "Sure, I've got some idea. But  _my_  job is containing chaos from the outside. If someone swapped your boss for a shambling interdimensional horror, I gotta know, y'know?"

It sounded about as probable as freezing time. Saphira kept coming towards him, neatly sidestepping Ocelot; could Snake unfreeze him and sic him on her?

No, she was too dangerous for that. Snake renewed the space between him and her and slowly lowered the gun. "Fair enough. But I've got one condition."

"You think you're in a position to be bargaining?"

Snake held up the pocket watch. Seeing the smile drop was satisfying.

"Okay, fine. I see your point. Spit it out."

"We have to find the Boss and get all of us back to the U.S.A. On this day, around this time. And. In this universe," Snake added.

Agent Saphira sighed. "We were planning on dropping you off anyway, we're only taking you so you _don't_ lose any more time... fine. But finding your boss isn't going to be easy."

"That's my condition." Snake shook the watch again. "You know, a weapon can be more dangerous in the hands of an amateur than an expert."

"Believe me, I know," Saphira said sardonically. "But what you're asking for isn't easy. You gotta give my partner back his watch first."

Snake had almost backed up into Darksmith anyway. He held up the time-stopping pocket watch for Saphira to see. She nodded in approval.

"Set it down, then click the latch again."

He did as she said, bending at the knees to put the pocket watch on the ground. He'd have liked to look it over a little more closely, but that wasn't an option right now. Right now, keeping the eye he did have on the agent was more important. When he felt the back of the watch make contact with the floor of the cabin, he clicked the latch again.

Next thing he knew, he'd been hit by a train. Snake was lying on his back in prickly grass, the stars spinning overhead, and the WIG looming over him. He could feel the imprint of a boot on his chest where he'd been kicked out the door.

A moment later, Darksmith and Saphira escorted Eva and Ocelot out, both of them swaying precariously on their feet.

"That was for being difficult," Saphira snickered down at him.

* * *

The Boss spent the night waiting for the punchline. It never came.

Morning dawned over Mother Base as blue and endless as the ocean beneath it. Sleep hadn't come easy. She'd been on edge as she waited for the illusion to break and to be back in Tselinoyarsk, back in front of Snake, back down the short path to her death. Of course, that hadn't happened, and somewhere near dawn, the Boss had finally let herself lie down awhile, more dozing than sleeping.

The Boss pulled her gear back on before she stepped out of the quarters that Revolver Ocelot had shown her to, putting her knife back in its sheath. A black and tan uniform had been left on the bed, but it hardly felt right.

She felt like the scar creeping up her torso burned itself deeper into her flesh at the sight of it, weighed down by her decision to stay. True, she didn't have much of a choice, but the Boss still found herself turning over what should have been her last day on Earth for signs something had been about to go sideways. There was no earthly way this was just a twist of fate. 

The Patriot was contemplated; there was no reason for her to be carrying it. As far as she knew, there wasn't much to do besides shadow Ocelot and learn the ropes, get caught up in world affairs. Operations couldn't proceed until their commander was back from the field. But the lack of its weight on her hip left her feeling like she was about to step out of the small room naked.

The sea breeze teased the loose strands of her hair as the Boss descended Mother Base's layers of steel. It was open to the air and the blue, blue sky, unlike Groznjy Grad. The blue ocean hemmed her in on all sides, calm and balmy, an island resort compared to that concrete behemoth. The jump from tones of gray to orange and endless blue was unreal. Like a joke. Like the Boss had walked to her grave and was handed a sudden vacation instead.

Well, she didn't want to keep waiting for the punchline.

Revolver Ocelot was waiting for her at the bottom of the final stairway. He and the Boss both stopped when they caught each other's eyes. Ocelot just shrugged as if to say, "yeah, I'm still here, you're still here, we're both not crazy, so let's get on with it." With a curt "mornin'," he waved her in the direction of the temporary mess hall.

A few early risers took notice as she passed by. The Diamond Dogs, in their tan and black uniforms, would pause in their morning rounds or at the chow lines and then look away when she caught them staring. She could sense curiosity from them rather than awe or admiration. History would not have been kind to her, she had known that, but it was disquieting to see how it had almost erased her. Nobody seemed to recognize her as anything more than a newcomer. But in her white sneaking suit, the Boss blended in here about as well as she melded with the cliffs of Kabul. She'd be a beacon again by noon.

Ocelot seemed to take no notice of this. He walked with his eyes ahead, but the Boss had the sense he was not oblivious to her reception. Conversations about her would likely be happening outside of his earshot.

"How's the mission?" the Boss asked at first opportunity. With the one link back to Snake resting firmly in Ocelot's inner ear, she'd had no word on him since Ocelot had shown her to her room and then hurried to an office somewhere higher up Mother Base's ladder. Needed to run some intel, he had said.

Across the mess hall table, Ocelot looked up from a heavily annotated notebook, shooting her a proud smile. "Snake's knocking it out of the park, he's got Miller. If things go smoothly, he'll be back later today."

Her fingers drummed against the laminated surface next to their mugs of morning coffee. "And my appearance here isn't going to cause problems?"

"If the Boss-" Ocelot caught himself and waved a hand, as it to banish both lines of thought. "If Snake says it won't, then it won't."

That was hard to believe. There had always been a suit or a senator or something of the sort waiting to tie up _her_ decisions with red tape. And if she wasn't dealing with the government, the Boss had to concern herself with those even higher up the ladder. She could never have made an addition to the Cobras without the Philosophers taking notice.

The alternative to that was that she would be kept a secret. She already had the new uniform, now she'd have a new rank, a new job, and - inevitably - a new name. And not just an alias to go on the paperwork, either.

During the brief walking tour of the incomplete Command Platform the day before, Revolver Ocelot had addressed the staff by names like "Brass Armadillo" and "Blue Mastodon". Evidently, twenty years had turned Jack's new name into something of a tradition. The Boss was anticipating she'd be dubbed some kind of animal to christen her new life. Rather than completing her final mission, the Boss would simply disappear. And in her place, a Diamond Dog.

The Boss willed her fingers to stop drumming, but she still felt restless.

Scribbling a few more lines in the notebook, Ocelot concluded his little project and leaned towards her across the table. She was anticipating his question. "How did you get here, anyhow?"

The Boss just shrugged. "I have no idea. One minute, I was in Tselinoyarsk, the next, I was here. It like the world I knew just faded away."

Ocelot gave her a small nod. His eyes wandered to the space over her shoulder.

"What did you see?" she asked.

"A flash of light out in the middle of the road." He parroted her hopeless gesture. "Then, you. Like I said, I almost thought I was hallucinating until Snake's radio picked up your voice."

"You knew right away."

"Like I could ever forget," Ocelot said, as if to himself. His gaze dropped briefly to the table.

In the absence of Big Boss and this un-met Commander Miller, Ocelot had the run of Mother Base. If you had told the Boss about this situation forty-eight hours ago, she would've braced for the entire installation to descend into chaos. But that was Major Ocelot; Revolver Ocelot moved smoothly through sliding steel doors, never hurrying, but wrapping the pace of things around himself. The Boss found herself slowing down to match him. The presence in her peripheral was a stranger, still Major Ocelot only in the details. He was there in the signs and signifiers, in the red gloves and scarf, or when his look of practiced calm became serious - or cocky. Revolver Ocelot didn't have to force a swagger in his movements like Major Ocelot did. The practice had long since become a habit. The voice he called instructions with over morning CQC training was one used to command. Diamond Dogs held him at a respectful distance, far more stably than the Ocelot Unit had, dropping their voices when he passed by.

Mostly, the Boss observed on the sidelines, pacing around the action, an unproven element in this mix. She watched Ocelot walk through morning practice, correct holds, point out openings, lecture about the split-second awareness of CQC like an old expert. He wasn't as practiced at it as Jack, but as far as she knew, he'd only had so many opportunities to learn.

To her knowledge, he'd had the one time. That'd been the night before last, and he'd come to her direct. The memory of her knuckles ringing afterward was fresh on her mind. The Boss caught a brief glimpse of Major Ocelot after a successful takedown and half-expected the bruise he earned in the torture chamber to still be there.

The Boss looked up at the black and yellow flag on top of the radio tower, flapping against the blue sky. The incomplete buildings were covered by construction tarps, proudly emblazoned with the Diamond Dogs logo. There were no national colors flying anywhere. Even the scattering of troops offered no leaning to the Diamond Dogs' allegiance; she had overheard snatches of conversation in a variety of tongues. Mostly in English, but she caught a phrase or two in Afrikaans, and a smattering of the languages of the Middle East, which she could scarcely identify, let alone understand. It'd been a long time since she'd been in this part of the world, and an even longer time since it'd seen her. So, Ocelot was right, it seemed Diamond Dogs really did hold a degree of independence from any solitary nation. Especially if Snake could just recruit from wherever and not hear questions about it. 

The Diamond Dogs were a motley bunch, even setting aside their far-reaching backgrounds. They hadn't been trained together as a unit, that much was clear. A shooting range set up for shooting practice was a field of targets hung off a walkway between buildings. Given the limited space available and the bullets flying, firearms training had to be done in shifts, with the fledgling combat unit taking priority. Some held their firearms like they were just an extension of themselves, others kept moving their hands or adjusting their stance. Ocelot spoke to one (she caught him referring to the man as "Roaring Stallion"), straightening his arm out and showing the soldier how to adjust his grip. The Boss stepped off the sidelines to better hear over the rapport of gunfire.

"...relies on the recoil to chamber the next round. If you don't let it hit you, you run the risk of your gun jamming on you." Ocelot clapped Stallion on the shoulder and stood back near the Boss. "Now try."

 "Where exactly did you pull them from?" the Boss asked, speaking under the gunshots. Ocelot paused and folded his arms, still watching his pupil.

"Volunteers, a few from all over. Mostly from installations in the Middle East. Afghanistan is a hotbed of conflict right now, so that's the epicenter. No one cares much where you're from, though. A Diamond Dog is a Diamond Dog."

Afghanistan. The Boss filed that away for later. "That would explain their skill level."

That got a small smirk out of him, and there was Major Ocelot again, supremely confident in himself. "We'll even it out, give it time."

"Stallion's not lining the sights."

"Again?" he sighed. "Roaring Stallion, what have I told you about using your sights?"

The work was just putting the final polish on the place before Ocelot handed the keys over. Throughout the training drills, checking in on the three-person R&D team, and reviewing construction progress, the radio stayed silent.

"I hope you're planning to give your horses space to run." The Boss spoke of the two animals in another temporary space, a paddock set up in what would someday be a ground vehicle hangar. There was Ocelot's, the white Andalusian, and an empty space for Jack's, who was dubbed "D-Horse". Ocelot had taken it upon himself to look after both them. "Is that the purpose behind the animal conservation platform you've got planned?"

"We got a grant from an environmentalist NGO who expressed interest," said Ocelot, hardly looking up from giving his steed a thorough rubdown. The Boss held her hand under the horse's snout, letting her sniff this odd-smelling stranger's palm. The horse snorted, ears flicking like a pair of satellite dishes. Ocelot looked up. "She likes carrots, if you want to grab a few from the storeroom. Third door on the left, it's not like you need me to supervise you."

The horse permitted the Boss to lightly brush her nose, and then her neck when she stepped around to the horse's side. "I'd hardly call it supervising in the first place. You want to know about an organization, you have to learn how it's run."

"Learn much?"

"Enough." The Boss took up a comb to work on the tangles in the horse's mane. Something, anything to do with her hands.

"Chomping at the bit there?"

She looked up. Ocelot was watching her, had been watching her the whole morning, sneaking glances as if to make sure she was still there. "When you prepare yourself to fight to your death, it takes more than twelve hours to come down from that," the Boss said simply.

"Well, we'll just have to find a way to put that energy to use."

Ocelot had been busy the previous evening, and hadn't found the time to be thorough with his horse. Her mane was a mess. The trick was you had to start at the ends and not pull, and the Boss being an unfamiliar presence meant she had to go slow.

"The platform got through the red tape?" she went on.

"With extensive lobbying, yes."

"And Snake has full jurisdiction over recruitment."

"We do operate with an extreme degree of freedom.

"Sounds like taking orders from a higher power."

Ocelot caught her hint magnificently. "You're about fifteen years late for that. The time of the Philosophers is long since over," he said, with a timed sweep of the soft brush.

 "They're _gone?_ ” The Boss's narrowed her eyes at him. "How?" Her voice betrayed her disbelief. People like that didn't give up their power easily, not for anything. And simply erasing them would've left a vacuum that collapsed East and West into the Atlantic.

"You might say 'the times'?" He sure had taken her words to heart. "Things change, Boss, and the Philosophers lost their grip the same as any regime eventually does. Besides, the environment's become a real concern over the last 20 years-" Ocelot was cut off as the radio in his ear crackled to life. He stopped midsentence, eyes fixing to the middle distance.

"I need to take this." The brush was tossed in its kit as Ocelot extricated himself from the makeshift paddock. The Boss set the comb aside and trailed after him into the blinding daylight, grabbing her gun belt from its place outside the paddock as she went. 

"I'd be glad to give you the history, but I have to go on call," Ocelot said, heading up a metal staircase to the radio tower, taking the stairs two at a time. The Boss easily kept pace with him. "You won't have clearance to supervise this one, unfortunately."

"I haven't been supervising."

"Of course not."

"Watch yourself." The words _you still remember who I am_  went unspoken.

Ocelot blocked her way to the dark interior of the comm room, the sliding door unresponsive to her attempts to follow him inside. He emerged moments later with a headset and what she at first mistook for a radio. "It's called a Walkman," Ocelot explained, popping the front lid to present the cassette tape held inside. "An innovation in personal audio devices - at least it was ten years ago. I was making briefing tapes for Snake, so it only covers the last ten or so years, but you might find it useful."

 Is he in trouble out there?" asked the Boss, unmoved.

Ocelot started, stopped, then gestured helplessly before pushing the Walkman into her hands. "If he ever was, he is right now."

"What happened?"

"Honestly, you'd need clearance to know all the details, and even then, I don't have them." He gave her a look to tell her that it couldn't be helped and disappeared inside. The door slammed in front of her, leaving the Boss standing on the catwalk.

She sighed, long and deep, turning to lean against the door; locked. Soundproof, too. And Revolver Ocelot was completely unresponsive to her attempts to throw her weight around. Of course: she wasn't the Boss anymore. Not here.

Back in the field after a nine-year coma. You didn't get back into fighting shape in a few weeks after a nine-year coma. A soldier's will could carry him far, over mountains, through jungles, and right to the gates of hell itself if that was where he needed to go, but his body couldn't always keep up. Not after a nine-year coma. Not after getting shrapnel lodged in your skull.

If she could at least know who the enemy was, what Jack's odds were...

With no other recourse, the Boss slipped the headphones on, hitting the Walkman's "play" button.

This was decidedly an improvement over the bulky apparatuses of yesteryear, but she was mildly disappointed this gadget didn't also project a surface made of hard light. [Ocelot's voice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdoc8MiFUVU) drawled calmly in her ears like he was standing right beside her. The Boss slid one half of the headset away from one ear as if to catch stray sounds from the other side of the locked door.

The Philosophers were gone. The yoke around her neck from the day she was born was consigned now, if Ocelot spoke the truth, to the forgotten pages of history, the things that existed between the lines of shredded letters and old society parties. Another piece of her own history that would be lost with her. And unlike so much else, this piece might not be missed: The Philosophers were mere shadows of their former selves by the would-be end of her life. If they couldn't be made to reconcile and heal the rift between East and West, then the next best thing would be to keep them from widening it. But even though they were gone - if Ocelot spoke the truth - the Cold War they left smoldered on, like a coal fire.

Ocelot outlined a microcosm of the cycle they began. Arrangements made in back rooms, power struggles settled through proxies of invasion, politics, and science. The Philosophers had pushed the times, and there they had stayed even when they were gone. And, Ocelot drawled on, the violence perpetuated by those proxies provoked retaliation after retaliation. The crushing inertia of warring superpowers.

The tape wasn't nearly long enough to see her through Ocelot's absence, and the comm room door was unyielding. The Boss pushed herself away from it, walking instead to the railing to overlook the endless blue.

_If_  Ocelot spoke the truth.

She rewound the tape, stopped it in the middle of its squeaky backward spiel, then hit rewind again, leaving the faint hiss of the mechanisms under the ocean breeze.

Unaccompanied for the first time, the Boss wandered with her thoughts. Ocelot was supposed to be her mole. If she had failed - or, she suspected, if Jack failed - he was there as backup. Someone up the CIA ladder (maybe even higher, if they had known about her and Ocelot) must've thought that was hilarious. Her first meeting with her son in twenty years and he was her contact.

Of course, he had found Snake first. So the Boss had found Volgin, who expected a shared childhood under the Philosophers' thumbs to trump the decades of their respective careers, the fool. He had been a bully even growing up, and blind, too; he might have toyed with her, but it was out of sadism. To watch her squirm over her student, the Boss was sure of it. He'd never seriously questioned either her or Major Ocelot. 

Like mother, like son. She had no idea how long he had been a CIA asset, or if he was a card up more sleeves than just theirs and the KGB's. And that had been more than twenty years ago. Ocelot could've worked directly for the Philosophers, and probably had.

Maybe even had a hand in their extinction.

Could this be a part of what had risen to take their place?

Ocelot's voice played on the tape again, like a stranger's. The information on it was likely factual, unless he was leading Jack through the dark again. She'd have to know more, and she had better learn it without it going through Revolver Ocelot.

"Excuse me. Sir."

The Boss turned reflexively to face the man who had addressed her, holding her head high as she slid the headphones off. The patrolling soldier was a tall young man with his brown hair buzzed short everywhere but the top. He held his rifle a little too formally, like he was on parade. His partner hung back a ways.

"Yes?" The Boss wasn't surprised at the formality, even though there was no trace of recognition in the man's eyes that she could see. He may not know _her_ , but a soldier could spot an officer on instinct alone.

"It's a pleasure to welcome you to Mother Base," he recited, and the Boss half-expected him to punctuate with a salute. "We were told you were an old friend of the Boss's, and wanted to ask if you'd heard from him."

Pulled in by his companion, the second soldier came forward. They had all been told that, had they? "Not directly," the Boss replied, "but I've heard from Ocelot he's on his way." If he walked out of whatever had caught him alive, but that wasn't something you concerned your troops with. The news animated the pair, both soldiers dropping from their attentive stances and speaking rapid-fire.

"It'll be good to see him," said one.

"Did you two use to work together?" said the other.

The Boss hoped she hadn't just set them up for disappointment.

They gave their names as Roaring Hedgehog and Hunting Harrier, with Hedgehog being the one who had approached her first, and they were all too eager for stories about their legendary commander. The Boss obliged in the name of reconnaissance, albeit with careful edits.

"And he only had a knife for survival gear, right?" Harrier piped in, mid-retelling, then shrank back when the Boss turned her gaze on him. It'd been a long time since she'd been interrupted.

"As part of the training op, he didn't even have that," she said. She'd orchestrated the exercise herself but had neatly omitted her involvement in the retelling of Jack's week alone in the woods.

" _That's_  brutal," said Hedgehog. "I've been through survival training, but nothing on that level."

"The idea was for him to learn self-reliance, as he told me." That he wouldn't always be able to depend on her, or anyone, for that matter. The only person you can trust on the battlefield is yourself. Even though she'd been part of the mock-enemy that came stalking him through the forest halfway in.

"Did you ever get to see the Boss working on CQC?" Hedgehog asked. Before she could answer, Harrier was going off again. 

"Man, I want the Boss to teach me some pointers."

"Yeah, Revolver Ocelot's pretty good and Commander Miller knows his stuff, but imagine learning it direct from the Boss himself," Hedgehog added to her.

Once she reminded herself they were talking about her student, not her, the reverent tones gave her a touch of pride. "If you want to train with him, I'll warn you right now he broke bones learning it."

Hedgehog came out of his reverie and cocked his head at her. "...I thought he created CQC?"

It wasn't even an effort to cover the slip. "He had the help of a good teacher. Though I don't doubt he's had time to innovate on it," she added. 

"Yeah," said Harrier, looking at Hedgehog as he nodded along, "maybe that's what he's been up to all these years. Making _Ultimate_  CQC."

It was just a little bit gratifying to see Hedgehog roll his eyes. "In that case, we'll have to see how it compares to the classic variety," the Boss said wryly, her own chance to see Jack's true skill thwarted.

Harrier grinned. "I'd like to see that."

Now Hedgehog had his bristles back, straightening as the conversation went from their Boss to the one they unknowingly had right in front of them. "Actually, the reason we came over in the first place was that we wanted to ask," he said, Harrier shifting nervously beside him. "We didn't catch your name when Ocelot told us you'd be around."

Ocelot hadn't done anything of the sort, at least not when she'd been present. The Boss blanked on an immediate alias. Ocelot might have already decided on something for her cover story, and you wanted to avoid inconsistency in those, even when your handlers kept you on a long leash. What _had_  he told them, exactly?

She settled on, "it hasn't come up, but when you need to know, you'll know."

"Hope you get to pick yours out," said Harrier, going along with the distraction far more readily than Hedgehog, who, for a moment, looked like he might press the issue. "I'd hate to be the guy who got stuck with 'Platypus' or something."

Hedgehog snorted softly. The Boss seized on the distraction, presenting the first absurd animal that came to mind. "I can't say I enjoy the thought of being called 'Llama'."

"Or 'Penguin'," Hedgehog added, any suspicion he might've had dropping.

"Hey, you think 'Koala' is on the table?"

"How exactly are Diamond Dogs assigned code names?" the Boss asked.

There was a glance between Hedgehog and Harrier. Hedgehog was first to break that eye contact. "So," he began, "Commander Miller... he's got these two hats, right? And when you join up, he pulls a name out of each hat..."

The Boss frowned, and Harrier's unsubtle snickering died an abrupt and horrendous death. "Be serious."

"I am," Hedgehog nodded sagely, and to his credit, he almost looked like he meant it.

"Diamond Dogs!"

Hedgehog and Harrier both snapped into statues.

A jingling of spurs preceded Ocelot's descending down to the tarmac, easy as anything. The Boss hadn't seen or heard him leave the comm room. "I see you've met our new arrival."

"Sir," Hedgehog said curtly. "We've got the all-clear, we thought we'd introduce ourselves to... uh..."

"Consider her code name tentative," Ocelot answered.

"Waiting on Miller to get the hats out?" the Boss asked wryly.

"Of course, can't do it without him." Then Ocelot's face darkened, like a cloud considering rain. He addressed the two soldiers. "Go find White Mastodon and Brass Armadillo, tell them to get the med bay prepped. The Commander's in rough shape."

Again, there was a question plain on their faces, and the Boss took it upon herself to give it voice, surreal as it felt to ask it. "And the Boss?"

"He's a-okay, got in and out without a scratch. Dismissed." Roaring Hedgehog and Hunting Harrier nodded, then turned and jogged off on their errand. Harrier waved at her before turning a corner. Ocelot led the Boss in the other direction.

"How's it feel, not being the Boss anymore?" he asked.

Weird. That's how it felt. "The Boss" was a name she'd come into naturally: her Cobras had called her that first. She'd been "The Boss" for the better part of her adult life.

"It's a situation you can find yourself in when you're undercover. This is hardly the first time I've discussed the name in the third person."

"No problem playing the role you've been dealt, huh?"

"Even when I was the Boss, I could still take orders."

"Then we should have no problem finding a place for you." Ocelot produced a few more cassettes from his pockets. "You can give these a try when I'm busy, but right now, I can tell you most of what you want to know."

"Good, you can start with Vietnam."

Ocelot took a slow breath in. "Oh, boy..."

* * *

When Death flipped his hourglass - Doric, with a dark stained base and frosted glass - The Sorrow expected something more dramatic to happen.

As it was, it was like he blinked, and went from a field of oil brush lilies to - he stumbled as the rope bridge swayed under a sudden weight - back to Russvet. The Sorrow could tell he was definitely solid again, as it took losing one's physical body to learn there was a sensation to having one. You felt like you were taking up a lot more space when you were all nerves and organs as opposed to only manifest consciousness.

Rain pattered softly against the hood of his coat. The air was cool, but stuffy with humidity. He almost wanted to suspect that the last two years really had been a dream, and he'd turn around and see the Boss emerge from the jungle again.

The Sorrow tugged the collar of his sweater up, self-consciously aware of the marks left on his neck and shoulders. Her hourglass weighed down one of his coat pockets. The world had been like that when he was dead: hazy and indistinct around the edges, connected only in a loose sense.

He'd wandered in and out of limbo like a sleepwalker. It let you notice things: when you knew how the story ended, you could let yourself become preoccupied with the details. The small things, the funny things, that you caught people doing when you could roam through the walls unseen, while the living were wrapped up in the big stuff. Like Jack in a crocodile hat, or The Fear laughing with the others about the side effects of the Brazilian jumping spider's venom, his new poison of choice. Adamska rehearsing the technique "that he'd learned for when he met the Boss" for his next encounter with his new fascination. Or The End making the most out of the overcast conditions by sunbathing without his gilly suit on. Or much of anything, really. When he was dead, Snake Eater had seemed less like it was about averting World War III, and more like it was the world's strangest family reunion. 

Now the world was real again, and Sorrow wasn't just watching anymore, he was a part of it.

Seychelles waters, November 11th, 1984. That was what he'd been told. The smiling specter was gone for now: Sorrow had a point on the map, and he needed to figure out how to get there.

But first, he'd need to find the other Cobras. If he was back at the spot where he died (he could see his Joy standing in front of him clear as day, the barrel of the Patriot staring back at him), that would dot them along the path back to Groznyj Grad.

He was already starting to miss the detached mobility being a ghost had afforded him.

No one was guarding the rusted-out hulk of Russvet, nor the trails beyond it that led toward the gorge where the Boss's student had dueled their son. Still, Sorrow stuck to the shadows, out of the way, as had long been his habit. The difference here was that he was inching along step-by-step instead of drifting, or trailing in the Boss's shadow. The soldiers who protected the weapons lab were likely in chaos or dead, with the facility destroyed and the Colonel fried. The rail bridge down the mountain was out of the picture, meaning reinforcements for the few outposts would need to find another way around. The other Cobras could move as freely as they pleased, but The Sorrow doubted that the Boss had felt it necessary to include a dead man in those exemptions.

He would find the others first, and then they would begin by investigating where the Boss had last been seen, by Rokojov Bereg in the field of flowers. Maybe, if they ran into him, they could enlist Adamska and his own unit to aid in the search. Sorrow knew the Boss wouldn't turn up from that alone; if Death couldn't find her, no Cobra or Ocelot or anything else on the mortal plane was about to. But there might be clues, and clues always felt like progress. It would buy time while The Sorrow attempted to work out exactly what Death had done to them.

If the Boss's hourglass was an anchor - had it always been this fast a walk to the first outpost?

The Sorrow peered around a tree trunk into the wide clearing. Just as he'd suspected, he could see a few figures shifting uneasily around the perimeter fence. He retreated into the underbrush, hyperaware of the disadvantage of black and gray against green. Even though he'd left the rain behind at some point, he kept the hood of his raincoat up; bare skin was even worse for visibility than black. With his eyes on the slouching guards, time seemed to slow back to a crawl.

He had almost skirted around to the other end of the clearing when he heard the familiar buzzing of insect wings. Sorrow scanned for Pain's looming silhouette, before the jungle around him were suddenly buzzing and alive. The Sorrow was pushed off his feet like he was being lifted by an invisible net.

"Look what I caught!" The Pain crowed as Sorrow cleared the canopy. He too was suspended in mid-air by his hornets, the pair of them maybe thirty feet above the ground. Pain leaned in, gesturing for his bugs to bring Sorrow closer for inspection. Sorrow pushed his hood back so the man could get a clear look at his face, and couldn't help but smile again when Pain's eyes lit up in recognition. "A comrade come back into the fold!"

There were shouts from below. "Pain-" Sorrow started, glancing at the soldiers below who had been jolted to attention by their appearance. He could see a few of them reaching for guns. The Pain held out a hand to stop them.

"This one is a friend of the Boss!" he announced.

"Theatrical," Sorrow noted, as the Pain flicked a hand and they began zooming away on a cloud of bees before any of the guards could remember whether or not they'd _actually_ heard news of the Cobras' deaths. "Thanks, I wasn't looking forward to the hike."

"It keeps the groundlings on their toes. I'm just glad you were close by. Where did you even end up?"

"On the rope bridge."

"That far?"

"It was where I died," The Sorrow said plainly. The fact of his death had never bothered him; the only thing haunting him was the Boss's face as she aimed that black eye at him.

Pain grunted a reply. His flamboyant new attitude receded with a lack of watching eyes; this was the quieter man Sorrow had known twenty years ago. "I was in the cave, where I fought the CIA agent - you know him, the new blood?"

"She calls him Jack."

The Pain glanced back at him and shrugged. "I call him 'the new blood.' I'm not about to start feeling fond of a greenhorn out gunning for the Boss."

Something in the Sorrow's stomach churned, a feeling that had nothing to do with the hornets flying him over the treetops in a body that now had to be concerned if he was dropped. Did they know that the Boss had no choice but to die by Jack's hand?

Perhaps they did. Perhaps, when the Sorrow was away dreaming in his limbo, she had told them parts of what he had overheard while he watched from her shadow. Then their final battles would be their way of making an exit as one. Of ensuring Jack was strong enough for what he had to do. The Cobras lived and died by the Boss's orders, after all.

"She cares for him."

"I know she does," Pain said, with no hint that he'd heeded the warning in Sorrow's words. If they ran into the Boss's last apprentice, Sorrow didn't want his comrades to descend on him. Maybe Jack could handle them one-on-one, but any one man who had to face four Cobras alone was, in summary, fucked.

His eyes fixed on a gap in the trees, where a flock of colorful parrots went up like a flare. Standing in the clearing below were Fear, End, and Fury, all intact, with The End waving them down.

Pain set them down in a clearing, his hornets dissipating into the tall grass. "The Cobras reunite!" Pain declared as the two of them hit the ground. He gave Sorrow a hearty slap on the back as the others gathered around them. Fury, with his fishbowl cosmonaut helmet nowhere to be found, stayed furthest back, eyes distant under his mask.

"So we can all agree that happened, correct?" Fury said, over the Cobras greeting their missing member. "We each fought the greenhorn, we died, we met a bad Halloween costume, it did something to us, and now we're back. It wasn't just a... fucked up collective dream."

The Pain locked a huge hand on Sorrow's shoulder and gave him a slight shake. "You think I brought back a zombie? Look, he's solid!"

Sorrow jumped when he felt something brush the side of his throat. Fear had snuck around him for his own inspection. "Hm, warm, too. Hold still, I just want to make sure you've got a pulse."

Sorrow swatted Fear's hand away before he could pull down the high neck of his sweater. "Good to see you again, too."

With the both of them rolling their eyes at Fear's antics, Fury came forward, apparently satisfied as to the reality of the situation. "Stop fucking around, you two," he said, but without the aggravation he used to, back when Fear had been hazing a freshly recruited Sorrow. Fury's face was dour, but Sorrow's own smile hadn't faded.

"They're fine, Fury." He laughed softly, thinking of the years he'd spent using the old code name out of habit. "I can call you that again now, can't I- FEAR!"

Fear retreated, putting on an affronted face. "Oh, what?

Like you're not the one who stuck around to _bone_  the Grim Reaper-"

"Did I just fucking hear that pun? Did I, Fear?"

"I was not-" Sorrow yanked his collar back into place, slapping a hand over the evidence when Pain leaned around to try and catch a glimpse. "Look-" He flipped the hood of his raincoat up, blushing furiously despite all of them being too old for this kind of nonsense. "Sometimes, the boundaries are thin out there, unconscious minds can meet, and I suppose things don't always happen in order. The important thing is that I have a lead, direct from the Boss herself."

He could _feel_ the playful jabs that they'd be wanting to make. Twenty years and one Major Ocelot later and they'd still never let him live it down. Like a pack of older brothers, really. To both avoid questions he didn't know the answers to and to get them back on track, Sorrow presented the frozen hourglass. It had the desired effect: a reverent hush fell over the Cobras.

"You've still got it," said End, who had been quiet through Sorrow's welcome party. But he was alert, and more awake than Sorrow had seen him in ages.

"It's supposed to be an anchor. Do you know what that means?" Sorrow asked him. He held the hourglass close to keep from dropping it, the others coming closer as though drawn in by it. The name carved into the base was covered by his hand. The agreement not to try and look at it went unspoken between the five of them.

"No, I've never heard of them being used like that."

"It might go along with whatever the Reaper did to us," Fear suggested.

"'Cutting the ties that keep us in this universe'," quoted Sorrow. "Whatever it is that means."

Pain, with his hand still on his shoulder, gave Sorrow another small squeeze. Fury shifted uneasily, planting his feet on the ground. End saw the little tell just as Sorrow did and nudged him gently. Fear got hip-checked when he tried to do the same.

"This," said Pain, slowly, " _is_  happening."

"I could've told you that. I remember the new kid setting me on fire!" Fear exclaimed.

"Yes, I have definitely had better experiences."

"Yeah, like burning alive," grumbled Fury.

Fear nodded at him. "And now we can all relate."

"Of fucking course you can."

End put a hand between them before this turned into one of their little spats. There was a flutter of wings from above and his familiar green parrot landed on it. "Life is full of little twists and turns," he said calmly. "Who expected we'd all be together again this life?" 

"Sorrow was always with us in spirit," Fear pointed out, to Fury's groans of complaints at the pun.

End laughed good-naturedly, depositing the bird on his shoulder. "True, true. Welcome home, Sorrow. Now, we find the Boss."

They were all looking to him. Of course: he'd have the most current take on the situation. Sorrow put the hourglass away and launched into it, listing all the moving parts of Operation Snake Eater. "Before I came back to the river with all of you, I saw her headed to the lake at the foot of the mountain," he said to four pairs of attentive eyes. "She destroyed Groznjy Grad, the scientist Sokolov is quite dead, and Volgin is... no longer a problem.

The colonel wasn't dead, per se. Sorrow had felt it. But he was so close to that edge, stuck in the mud with one foot in the water, that Sorrow had a hard time imagining he'd crawl his way back.

"The Boss's apprentice and Tatyana destroyed the Shagohod and were headed towards the Boss's location, and Major Ocelot was pursuing them," he continued. The Cobras probably ought to avoid mixing with Snake and Eva for now, but his son's attention could stand to be torn away from Snake for a few minutes.

End nodded along. "Sounds like we're headed to the lake." His parrot squawked in agreement: "To the lake! To the lake!"

Pain struck out first, commanding his hornets ahead of them. "Onwards, brothers!"

To the lake they went, slinking through forest trails as a unit. They'd met up near the foot of the mountains, meaning it would be a few hours even with The End leading them down deer-trod shortcuts and The Pain's hornets confirming there was no need to move quietly. Even the Ocelot Unit was scattered now: Pain's and End's animal scouts gave reports, distant chatter telling them that the Major had gone ahead in pursuit of the American agent and his accomplice and hadn't returned, though an aircraft had been seen leaving the lake he'd reportedly been headed to.

Everyone had looked at Sorrow when this was reported. Though quietly disappointed, Sorrow simply stated, "he'll be fine."

Jack and Adamska admired each other too much to do serious damage to one another. He wondered what the Boss thought of that. Hopefully, he'd have the chance to ask her.

A bird squawked overhead and flew off, invisible in the upper layers of the canopy. Beside him, Fury was pulling off the layers of the respirator and communications assembly that he wore under his helmet.

The glass bubble had already been discarded on his trip down the mountain ("The torture I can understand, but that ladder - that's how you know Volgin was a real fucking maniac."). Overhead, a bank of clouds kept threatening more rain, which might have helped the humidity, but wouldn't cool Fury's temper. Sorrow couldn't help but wince in sympathy at the sight of Fury's warped scar tissue.

He had _heard,_  yes, he and Ilya had kept in contact after the Cobras, and the accident had happened not long before Sorrow's death. But seeing it put him in mind of the many ghosts that had met a fiery end. He'd tasted the flames more than once in the course of gathering information from them; it was a horrible way to die. Surviving such injuries might almost be worse.

Fury caught Sorrow's gaze. "So," he began, and Sorrow focused on his eyes while they both tried to pretend he hadn't been staring. "Was that really what the boney motherfucker said he did to us?"

"That's exactly what the Grim Reaper said."

The resurrected cosmonaut gave the ex-ghost a "you really just said that, fucking incredible" look, but Sorrow was already back to trying to work out what it all meant. If Death was speaking literally, then they shouldn't be walking along the ground right now. They probably ought to be more like ghosts, or made out of a different kind of matter entirely. If you weren't a part of the universe, where else could you go? The world of the dead?

"Maybe it's like The Time Machine, only we don't need the machine," Pain suggested from the front of the group. "Or traveling between dimensions like the shambling monstrosities of Lovecraft."

"That one must not've made it over here," Fury called, "because I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"Yeah, Lovecraft's American. His stuff's all about how humanity isn't alone in the universe, and how we're mere _insects_ compared to the monsters that live outside of time!"

"What, is that supposed to be frightening? I could've told you that."

"Yes, but you've probably never seen anything like a Shoggoth, not even in your worst nightmares."

"No, in those I'm _pretty motherfucking preoccupied!_ "

"What do you- oh- look, it's just a figure of speech-"

"Hey, Pain, you think you can get a copy to me some time?" Fear cut in.

"I'll see what I can do, hang on. Fury, you know what I meant by that, it's an express- where'd Sorrow go?"

They all turned and looked at him, and for a second, Sorrow was positive they were all looking _through_  him. Then something snapped into place and the Cobras all jumped, Fury most of all, as they saw him properly again. "How in the holy hell did you do that!?"

Sorrow looked between all of them and saw the same question Fury demanded. "I was here the entire time," he said, puzzled.

"You were completely gone two seconds ago!" said Pain. The others nodded along.

Sorrow put his hands out. "I don't know what to tell you. I was here."

The Cobras went quiet while they all mulled over this. As far as Sorrow was concerned, he'd been present the entire conversation, walking beside Fury and listening. When they slowly accepted this explanation and got moving again, Fury wordlessly grabbed ahold of Sorrow's arm. He didn't let go for some time.

The next leg of the walk passed with less chatter, except for Pain quietly summarizing the work of H. P. Lovecraft to Fear. Fury seethed, but his grip on Sorrow seemed to keep him grounded, as did the others looking back to make sure he hadn't vanished again.

The rage flickering off Fury seemed nearly palpable, anger at the disconnect between how he knew the world worked and what his eyes tried to tell him was there. What was happening now probably teetered too close to his delusional episodes for his liking; the visions of falling towards Earth like a comet had haunted him since the accident. Prior to his death, Sorrow had had to try and talk him back to reality on more than one occasion.

He leaned in so that only Fury could hear him, "I may not know how that happened, but nothing we've seen today has been a hallucination. Trust me."

Fury only nodded, but he let go of Sorrow not long after that. He walked silently, but his temper was cooling to its usual levels again.

It was quiet - right up until The End's parrot flew from his shoulder to look ahead, and something sliced its wingtips off mid-flight. It went down with a startled squawk.

Pain snapped a hand up. "Hold it." 

His hornets swarmed ahead, hovering cautiously in a space between two trees, a few feet above the Cobras' heads. They must've seen something the unfortunate bird could not.

"A trip wire?" Pain translated, puzzled.

The Fear shook his head, stating what they all knew. "Too high up." He approached one of the two trees, scrambling spider-like up its trunk to investigate.

Sorrow only took his hand off Fury's shoulder when the other man had lowered his flamethrower. He squinted hard at the empty space defined by the hornets, tilting his head to try and find an angle where the trap was visible. Fury did the same next to him while End retrieved the downed bird. It was alive - Sorrow would've felt it if it died. The trip wires had only taken off the long flight feathers on the ends of its wings. Gone clean through them. It flopped onto End's outstretched hand and shuddered.

If you held your head at the right angle, it was just possible to pick out a net of thin, glimmering lines wound between the two trees. It would've been easier to see on a clear day. Hanging from a branch with his one hand, Fear slid a knife under their anchor point with his other, and the whole thing fell like an old cobweb.

"Not one of yours, I take it?" Sorrow called.

"I've been using rope. Easier to see."

His eyebrows went up. The Fear, playing fair? "Since when do you ease up on your prey?"

"Since the jungle was crawling with our allies and civilian scientists. We've all got to grow up some time, Sorrow."

"Two weeks ago, I watched you put a spider in Major Ocelot's coffee."

"Just like I used to do with you," Fear mused, practically dripping nostalgia. He started scrambling up the tree where the wire was wound. "And for the record, it was only a brown tarantula. They're practically harmless!"

"There's more deeper in," Pain interrupted their banter. "Like a maze of telephone cables, not something anyone at Groznjy Grad could do. Fear, you ever seen anything like it?"

With the wire in his hands, Fear gave a sharp tug. For how fine it was, it didn't break. He made his way along a branch to the other anchor tree, winding up the loose wire and pocketing it while he peered off into the trees. "I can't see a thing out there, they're practically invisible if you don't know where to look."

"Then don't follow them," said Fury. "We are not going to tell the laws of nature to go fuck themselves only to have you die again an hour later like an imbecile."

"I'm not! Do you think I'm a moron, Fury?"

"Twenty-five years and you have yet to prove that's not-" Fury cut himself off. They all followed his gaze to End, who was signaling for silence. A hush fell as the Cobras listened for what he had heard, but there was nothing. And that was the problem - nothing. An unnatural hush had fallen over the forest.

Sorrow thought he heard movement somewhere deeper in the trees. The Cobras all looked in that direction as though pulled by a magnet.

Fear caught End's eyes and motioned towards the noise. End set his rattled bird on his shoulder and held up his rifle to peek through the scope, shook his head, and motioned for them to continue the way they had been going.

They were all a lot less talkative the rest of the way to the lake.

Nothing showed itself for the remainder of the walk, but this was not cause for calm. Pain reported more networks of wires intersecting their path, but his hornets couldn't follow them to a source. They just rambled their way through the jungle, starting and stopping with no clear organizing pattern. Whatever had retreated into the depths when it heard them coming never put in an appearance - meaning it could still very well be out there, but was capable of evading the Cobras' detection.

The clouds overhead called off the threat of a downpour, allowing small breaks for the day's dying sunlight. The birds landing for the night gave End nothing to report, either. It was twilight by the time they reached the lake, and the threat of the encroaching dark was putting them all on edge.

Finally, the forest dropped away and dipped into a shallow valley, holding the lake that would've been the Boss's final battleground. Even though they were losing the light, you didn't have to look hard to find something amiss.

"The hell happened there?" Fury muttered, pointing at a black stain on the lakeside where a circle of trees had been burned to standing sticks of charcoal.

"I couldn't tell you," said Sorrow, looking to their scouts, thinking of the dreamscape he'd woken up from. A few hours ago, the circle of ash would've been its real-world counterpart.

End was already peering through his scope. "It would seem we have a few bodies."

"Hostiles?"

"None I can find," said Pain, waving his hornets back to him. "But we are seeing more trip wires. A line of them begins down there."

With the exception of a few survivors on the outskirts and, more curiously, a completely untouched circle at the center of the burn zone, the field of wild lilies had been torched. The Cobras approached on full alert, Pain's hornets landing on another web of trip wires that had been anchored to a blackened tree. They led off back into the nearby jungle. Sorrow noticed that the plants underfoot had been blasted flat, blown outwards from the undamaged circle of flowers. He looked at Fury, who nodded in acknowledgment before his attention was drawn elsewhere: charred corpses lay like logs in the blast field, burned beyond recognition.

Fury nudged one with his boot, his scarred face impassive. "Christ, it must've burned like hellfire... Look at this." He indicated a twisted metal lump. "That was a rifle."

"But these trees are only externally charred." End was examining one of them, picking off a layer of charcoal that had been bark. "Alas, the heat'll have killed them."

"Would've been an exquisite blaze, eh, Fury?" said Fear. Sorrow had joined him in the untouched epicenter but was keeping an eye on the cosmonaut. Fury was too busy examining the charred corpse, his back to them.

There were some soft impressions in both the intact foliage and their less fortunate neighbors. The footprints in the cooled ash were distinct, a trail of them leading away from the epicenter. But try as he might, Sorrow couldn't find any impressions in the healthy plants suggesting which way they'd come from. The trail _started_ here, as though its maker had just been dropped in the eye of the blaze.

Sorrow nudged Fear and indicated what he'd found. "Is it me, or do the footprints start in this circle?"

Fear cocked his head, narrowing his slitted eyes. "You know, you may be right. And you know what else?" He bent down, scuttling a few feet along the trail. "Hm... we're either dealing with multiple culprits, or something with a lot of legs. Shall we... go and investigate?"

After a moment, Sorrow realized that the other Cobras, save for Fury, were looking to him again for direction.

"I don't know what this is. There's potential for it to be connected, but we have no idea what's out there or what it's capable of," Sorrow said. "What's worse, the trail heads for the jungle, and it's getting dark."

He was looking to End, who might as well have been a part of the jungle himself, but who would also be handicapped come nightfall. Would his renewed vitality be enough to compensate for losing the daylight?

"I'll be fine with the Cobras behind me," End said confidently. "Far from the first time we've hunted in the dark, isn't that right?"

"Indeed," said Fear, loading one of his crossbows. "We move as a unit and come back as soon as we find something."

Pain nodded. "Strength in numbers!"

"Right. Fear, Pain, with me. Sorrow and Fury can continue investigating here. We'll meet back up after and camp by the lakeside for the night."

With an affirmative, the two followed Fear down the trail, the latter bounding ahead on all fours. Fury stayed behind, and Sorrow stayed with him; the spirits of the recently departed would be fresh here.

Funny; twenty years ago, he'd been the rookie among the Cobras. They'd taught him to put his powers to use, and he had and continued to do so. After climbing a steep learning curve, he'd found himself sitting on top of Russian intelligence ops when the Cobras disbanded. Moving those puzzle pieces around was just communing with the living instead of the dead. Now he was back with the Cobras and he was the expert.

"You know you don't need to keep an eye on me," Sorrow called to Fury, more to get his attention than anything; it'd been decades since using his powers demanded enough attention that he was left vulnerable. But there was no reply from the other man.

Sorrow stepped into the ring of ashes towards him. "...Fury?"

He seemed to be staring at the corpse still, but without seeing it. You could see the slackness in his face, the distant look in his eyes. Sorrow stopped a cautious distance from him and gently repeated his name. It was only when his answer was continued silence that Sorrow reached out to him.

Fury reeled, falling backwards onto his ass and flinging an arm up, like Sorrow's prodding was a gunshot. "Christ- I'm fucking fine! Just... go do your ghost shit!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure, I don't need to be babysat." Fury clambered to his feet and stalked away, shouldering his flamethrower as he surveyed the blast field. 

"You- do what you do best," he called over his shoulder. "I for one can't learn anything more."

Sorrow nodded at him, knowing that Fury wasn't about to open up. So he turned his attention on the corpse at his feet instead, and let his eyes unfocus in that peculiar way that let the dead come into view. It was like opening your eyes underwater. Physical forms blurred, leaving ghosts the only ones with definition.

Black ops. Definitely black ops, and elite agents at that. The ghosts crouched alongside the dead trees, their body armor painted in dark camouflage and blending into the ashes. They held their weapons at the ready, as if preparing to pounce on the Cobras when they were spotted. The man whose body lay at Sorrow's feet recoiled when he looked at him. Perhaps their deaths had been so fast it hadn't really sunk in yet.

Sorrow's gaze locked on the ghost in front of him. He seized upon the man and dove in, disjointed memory washing over him.

The man was either American or American-sent, it was difficult to nail down in the miasma of sensation. But there was definitely a sense that he belonged _over there_  in some fashion. He gave up the last moments of his life first: their target had vanished under unexplained circumstances, but was presumed not dead, and their subject had departed on the WIG. The strike team had emerged from the underbrush like snakes, slithering into the clearing after the other Snake had departed. They too had been investigating the clearing, then unburnt, when there had been a flash of light and a cluster of figures-

Wind. Heat. Fire. It had happened as fast as Sorrow had been expecting.

He prodded for answers - who sent you? What did you see? - and got only the letters "XOF". Sorrow was beginning to realize who exactly the "target" was when dread crashed over him like a tidal wave. Like the call of the scout you hadn't seen. Gunshots you didn't expect. The feeling of a mission turning south and fast.

Whether his physical body spun around or it was just some psychic sensation, Sorrow was struck full force by a blast that put Fury to shame in every respect. Wrath, pure fucking vengeful _rage_ , knocked him backwards and out of his target's mind. He could see fire, hear screams, marching footsteps and figures like giants as he was adrift in a sea of babble, buffeting him and striking him for his lack of understanding. Something grabbed him while he was lost in the current, the images flashing before him obscuring any view of the real world. It was all agony and confusion and with every change of post losing just a bit more of himself. The grip on him was unbreakable and he had to get away, burn it down, struggling towards the distant call of his name-

Fury was shaking him and Sorrow was yanked from the water like a drowned man.

"--Sorrow! What the fuck was that?" Fury held him rigidly at arm's length. His face swam in visions of fire. "I thought you said that didn't happen anymore!"

His heart was racing, a sensation that was newly alien to him. Sorrow had to collect himself in-between lungfuls of air, back in a body that, connected to the universe or not, still needed the oxygen. Fury was shouting through an undercurrent of memory, Russian crawling in around German, Polish, Bulgarian. Sorrow had to fight through the phantom echo of jackboots to speak to him.

"Sorry, I- something I didn't expect found me."

Sorrow swayed and tried to straighten himself, Fury having been supporting some of his weight. Fury startled when he moved, like he expected him to lash out. Sorrow was about to ask when he felt the dread creeping back up on him.

The figure of rage licked at the back of his mind like a roaming blaze. Sorrow immediately put up his learned defenses, shutting down any vulnerable avenues. The research facility had been a long time ago, probably ruins now. He focused on Fury's face, which was alert and trained on him.

"I've never seen you run afoul of something that pissed off. Not even me." It was meant as a joke, but Fury's voice still betrayed some concern.

"What happened?"

"You collapsed and started convulsing. When I came over here you shot up and tried to goddamn strangle me."

Sorrow winced. Suddenly the tension in Fury's grip, not to hold him up but to hold him away, made sense. It had indeed been a very long time since he'd come across something that vicious.  Sure, he had been possessed a few times in his younger years, but never to the point of violence against a friend. Not like that.

"Are you alright?"

Fury released him reluctantly, still on edge. "Yes, I'm fine. Just... you had this look on your face. Like the one that mad bastard colonel gets when he's beating the shit out of someone."

Sorrow tracked the prowling figure on the edge of his senses with both his eyes and his mind. The spirit was hazy around the edges, as though it was defying his attempts to identify it. It looked more like a shadow made of ashes than a human, black smoke swirling around a raging core. Less a person and more raw anger. Something like that had happened to Fury when he was dying, but not like this. You had to lose yourself completely for something like this.

Fury watched Sorrow track the ghost with his eyes, straining to get a bead on the threat himself.

 "...there was nothing natural around that explosion," he mumbled, pulling Sorrow in the direction the others had gone. "Come on."

A few memories lingered while they hauled away from the burned clearing, an unfamiliar panicked stampede from a factory inferno running together with the concrete room where the researchers had put him through their battery of tests. Sorrow tried to shove them away; that had all been a very long time ago. The ghost was merely dragging it up as a way to get into his head. But the helplessness it brought with it, the long-buried terror, came with enough clarity that Sorrow found he was trembling in spite of himself.

Fury must've seen how he had his eyes fixed on the tree line, trying to slow his breathing. He watched him for a moment or two before looking ahead again, as though looking for something to say.

"Relax," Fury finally said in a tone of forced placation. "You're only human. It's not a weakness."

"I know," Sorrow sighed, though coming from Fury, the sentiment was not unappreciated. "'Shellshock.' It's the brain's self-defense mechanism."

Fury nodded. "The Boss told me that, when we all reunited. You know I wasn't the only one who'd been a _test subject_ for space flight." He more growled the words than spoke them. "...she was like my American counterpart. She's been up there, and nearly died on re-entry, the same as me. She showed me the scars. The difference is you can't see her's with her gear on. I suppose they were willing to burn us both."

"I... might have overheard." The blind panic was starting to recede. Even invoking the Boss had a soothing effect. Sorrow could remember watching from her shadow as she spoke to Fury after one of his episodes, reminding him where he was: back on Earth, and more importantly, among friends. Fury had always had a kind of mania to him, a hot core of anger at his center from which he took his name, but after his space flight, it came coupled with the hallucinations and the flashbacks. Sorrow had had more time to learn how to manage him; the first time Fury lashed out at them, the other Cobras had withdrawn - but not her. She only asked he be mindful where that anger was directed. 

Fury gave him a rare grin and nudged him with his shoulder. "You sly dog, you ought to have said something. It wasn't the same without you around."

Sorrow smiled back but shook his head. "It wasn't the right time." Still, he'd been glad he was in their thoughts. Gone but not forgotten, the Cobras were so attuned to one another that they could sense their missing member's spirit even when they couldn't see him.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say." Fury rolled his eyes, but not without humor. It was some time before he spoke again. "...speaking of the paranormal, did you get anything we could use?"

Sorrow pushed away the memories of the small village invaded and set ablaze, instead recalling what he'd learned before the invasion of his mind. "A black ops strike team from an organization called XOF. They were sent by the Americans, but I get the impression Jack doesn't know about that."

"'Jack'?"

"Snake," Sorrow hastily corrected himself, "the Boss's student. XOF was sent to ensure the success of his mission, and... to bring the body back home."

"There'd be no body, the micro-bomb-"

"She didn't have her's."

A hush fell between the pair of them. They were beyond the edge of the burned field now, their comrades some ways ahead. Sorrow looked over his shoulder to see the figure of smoke staring at him with eyes like chips of embers. But it hadn't pursued them.

Fury bumped him with his shoulder again to reclaim his attention. "...hey. Sorrow. This - what's going on here. Us being here. This is a temporary pardon, isn't it?"

"All of you were supposed to die today," Sorrow said softly. He had known from the moment he'd come out of his limbo, but was less sure how Fury would take the confirmation.

Fury scowled, looking ahead. "...so now we have to take her back with us."

"I don't like it any more than you do." Until a few hours ago, her death would've meant the Cobras' true reunion. To be the ones to bring her there went starkly against the unit's very nature.

"...you think," Fury went on, "since the hourglass is frozen, that means her life has stopped, even though she's alive still. Do you think that means she _can't_ die?"

"Everything dies, Fury."

"Except us, apparently. We're well beyond the boundaries of normal now, especially since we're 'disconnected from the universe' and all. Maybe that's why you vanished on us."

"You'd be interfering with something much bigger than the Boss's death." That undercurrent was far too powerful. Denying it would break a person.

Fury grumbled something and led him a few more paces away from the clearing. Sorrow was expecting him to say something about how he'd burn it down, burn it all down for her sake. And god help him, if Fury could, Fury would. And the others would probably join him.

"What's it _mean_ , unanchored from the universe?" Fury suddenly snapped. "Come the fuck on, if this is supposed to be important, why be so goddamn cryptic about it?"

Sorrow spared another glance at the vengeful shadow left behind them. He had a thought brewing in his mind, about why he specifically was the one entrusted with the hourglass, and while now wasn't the optimum time to test it, there were far worse ones. He pointed in the spirit's direction.

"The thing that possessed me is that way, Fury, can you see it?"

"Not a damn thing."

"Keep an eye peeled anyway, I'm going to try something and I need you to keep watch."

Sorrowed reached into his raincoat for the hourglass again, letting his eyes unfocus.

The hourglass had a curious energy to it, like an aura. Sorrow hadn't noticed until he was looking for it, but it wasn't just an object. It had _life_  in it, not like a living thing in and of itself, but more like the way the moon's glow came from reflected sunlight. It had the same feel as her, a distant echo of her footsteps on the suspension bridge, drawing him out of dreaming.

Those footsteps left a path, a sort of arcing parabola of something thrown.

A path to through time, to Seychelles, 1984.

Sorrow took a step forward -

Straight off a ledge. And vanished from the Waking World with a sound like a

* * *

Evidently, Hedgehog and Harrier did not feel news of Big Boss's return was something to keep quiet. Soon, Mother Base was buzzing as the helipad was checked over, construction paused, and soldiers ducked into their quarters in shifts to straighten their uniforms and shine up their boots. For a few hours, the Boss found herself resisting double-takes when she overhead an excited, "The Boss is coming back!"

"What, really?" was the reply to one of these excited whispers.

"Yeah, he's only a few hours out."

"Finally."

"I know, right? I can't wait to meet him."

"What do you think he's like in person?"

"Well, I heard," the speaker's voice dropped, "back in MSF, he once fought an entire velociraptor."

A scoff. "That's impossible. They're extinct, dumbass."

"I _know_ , right?"

But that conversation came to an abrupt halt when the Boss - the wrong one - passed by. It might've been the lack of a code name; it meant she wasn't really a part of the team yet.

As noon approached, those that could step away from their work found themselves drawn to the heliport as a black dot grew larger on the horizon. For once, the Boss wasn't the center of attention; the Boss was. Big Boss, rather, but most didn't bother with the full title. He was just "the Boss" Now she was just an oddity in her white suit. A curiosity, not a legend.

"Miller's probably gonna be in a bad state. Not just physically, but psychologically, too," said Ocelot, leaning in next to her on the helipad. "He was being interrogated by the Soviets for more than a week. You know they're not as bad as Volgin, 'cause he lasted that long, but he might still be in shock. Delirious, you know?"

The man Snake helped off the chopper certainly looked like he'd been to hell and back. Kazuhira Miller was bloodied, beaten, exhausted, and gray under a layer of grime and a pair of scratched-up aviators. Only one foot hit the tarmac, the other pant leg hanging limply and crusty with gore.

Still, Miller soldiered on, trying to pull his right hand away from Snake's side and still keep his balance. Roaring Stallion hurried forward with a crutch and was roughly shoved back into line once Miller was steady.

The patch of white among the tan and black must've drawn his eyes, like a bleach stain. Miller caught sight of the Boss standing next to Ocelot and drew himself up a little straighter.

"Who's this?" he demanded, unsteady on the crutch. Snake stood at his shoulder, his eyes on Miller.

Ocelot stepped between the Boss and the subcommander. "The one Snake would've told you about, an old friend who came to help get us up and running," he volunteered. Miller side-stepped him to get a better look at her, the motion making him sway unsteadily. His look of suspicion didn't change.

"And you're called?"

Ocelot glanced back at her and mouthed "White Cobra", his eyes searching her's. The Boss needed a moment to realize the look was him silently seeking her approval.

"White Cobra," she declared, so that the gathered Diamond Dogs could hear their new number.

Miller was less convinced. He looked her over critically in a way no one else in Snake's new outfit had. So, he wasn't to be in the know about her?

"Welcome to Diamond Dogs," he said gruffly, pushing his way past Ocelot. Snake came up behind him like a shadow. "Check your past at the door. The rest of us started over from nothing-"

The Boss saw the gentle way Snake put a hand on Miller's shoulder before giving it a firm squeeze. She saw the way this unwound the fight in him. Saw the way Ocelot regarded this instantaneous little tell.

The Boss, now White Cobra, tried to catch Snake's eye when his attention wandered from Miller to the rest of them. Just a simple "good job out there", given the physical toll of the task he'd been given. But he only looked her way for an unreadable instant before turning away and ushering Miller to the waiting medical team. His XO hadn't sat down on their gurney for a second before he pulled Snake in for a conversation only they could hear.

Ocelot led her away off the heliport. They passed the rest of the Diamond Dogs to a disjointed chorus of "welcome to the team, Cobra" from what the Boss supposed were her new unitmates. He dismissed most, but called for a few to stay behind.

"White Cobra," he said, as though sounding the name out, attaching it to her in his mind. He had a pleasant smile on that didn't quite reach his eyes. "That work for you?"

"White Cobra, for the last of the Cobra Unit." It made her think of The Fury's last words to her before he lapsed into his final manic episode and his radio went dead, defying the finality of her mission to the very end. Well, he'd gotten his wish. She'd lived on.

"It seemed to fit. The Boss'll assign you to a unit, Cobra, that's actually what I need to talk to him about now." His expression changed subtly, seeming to glaze over slightly now that he could refer to her just like any other Diamond Dog. "You're free to go. Of course, if you stick around, you can help test the personnel Fulton system."

* * *

_brrrrii-brrrii!_ _brrrii-brrrii!!_

"Name?"

"Call me Snake."

Darksmith stared at him over his sunglasses. He had some time traveler gadget or another in his hand, giving off a white light that he typed notes into. When Snake was impassive, Darksmith pressed, "your _real_ name, jackass."

_brrrrii-brrrii!_   _brrrii-brrrii!!_

"Don't swear at the witness, jackass," Saphira cut in. A flare had been lit to provide some illumination in the dark field, and it gave her a gory red glow. She stood guard over Ocelot and Eva, who were both slumped against the plane. Ocelot would've been nursing a nasty headache, though Eva was roughing out the wound in her hip. She might've been pale. It was difficult to tell in the red light.

"You actually expect me to give you my real name?"

"Yeah." Darksmith tapped his pencil against his notepad impatiently.

_brrrrii-brrrii!_   _brrrii-brrrii!!_

"Do you have _any_  idea what the hell you just interrupted?"

"Not really. If we need to do a follow-up, the fuck are we gonna tell the Daves at the office? 'Yeah, he's called Snake, but before you start laughing at the poor bastard, no parent was actually cruel enough to call their kid that, he's just some kinda Rambo motherfucker from ABK-91987, we have a couple more questions to ask him about the jungle he torched-'"

"At the risk of getting into one of your tangents, Darksmith," Saphira said before Snake could get in his own retort, "go ahead and put that in. Make a note about the circumstances."

_brrrrii-brrrii!_   _brrrii-brrrii!!_

"The Daves are gonna whine about it."

She grinned. "I'll deal with them."

_brrrrii-brrrii!_   _brrrii-brrrii!!_

Snake forced his way back into the conversation. "It wasn't me who torched anything. Check me over, there's nothing I've got on me that can take down a MiG from the ground."

Eva put a hand up. "I can vouch for that."

_brrrrii-brrrii! brrrii-_

"The hell is that noise?!" Ocelot snapped, forehead in one hand.

Silence fell over the field, except for the radio's _brrrrii-brrrii! brrrii-brrrii!!_

Snake stared at Agent Darksmith. "That'd be my radio."

_brrrrii-brrrii!_   _brrrii-brrrii!!_

Darksmith made a face. "Yeah, please shut that thing up."

_brrrrii-brrrii!_   _brrrii-brrrii!!_

Keeping his eyes on the agent, Snake took a few steps to the side, to make it less likely they'd overhear the call. In the blink of an eye, Darksmith's broadsword was against his back.

_brrrrii-brrrii! brrrii-brrrii!!_

"You mind?" Snake said tersely.

_brrrrii-brrrii! brrrii-brrrii!!_

There was a pause _(brrrrii-brrrii! brrrii-brrrii!!)_ and he saw Agent Saphira nod beside a pale Eva. Behind him, Darksmith said, "yeah, I kinda do."

_brrrrii-brrrii!_   _brrrii-brrrii!!_

"Let me guess, 'classified'?," said Saphira, her grin splitting open as she made air quotes.

_brrrrii-brrrii!_   _brrrii-brrrii!!_

"Just answer the goddamn radio," Eva groaned.

Snake stepped away to keep all the rest in his line of sight and clicked on the receiver.

_brrrrii-brrrii! brrrii-_

_"Snake,"_ came Major Zero's voice, faint from a weak signal. _"We've got those readings confirmed, but we've lost your location. What's your ETA?"_

"Maybe..." Snake did the math. "Four hours. If we don't have any hold-ups," he added, staring pointedly at the grinning Agent Saphira.

_"Is something the matter?"_

"You could say that," he said slowly, watching Saphira draw her index finger across her throat and then press it to her lips. She and her hidden pistols were far too close to Eva for his liking. "Don't worry about it, it's nothing I can't handle. What did you find out?"

_"It's... unusual. There's a drop in the readouts, followed by a repeat of approximately the prior fifteen seconds."_ As Zero talked, he saw Eva get Agent Saphira's attention, starting a hushed conversation. Saphira spoke back, grin unbroken as she shook her head. Ocelot was watching them both. Zero went on, _"It's happened twice more since we were last in contact. The first of those was several hours ago and repeated the prior minute. The second was twenty minutes ago, but only repeated about five seconds."_

"What do you think it means?"

_"I honestly couldn't tell you."_

Something in the dark above them caught Snake's eye. He looked up at the space over the WIG, where familiar blue sparks began to dance.

"Zero," he said cautiously, not taking his eye off the spot. "I have an idea, but it's gonna sound pretty out there."

_"It's too consistent to be equipment failure, so we have to consider a range of possibilities at this point."_

It was like a hole was torn in space and electricity came pouring out. Now the others noticed, the Time Cops springing to alert.

"Time travel, Major."

_"Wha-- ...n't tell you."_

Zero's voice was lost in a fuzz of static as lightning snapped overhead, become a shape. While everyone else watched the sky, he began repeating himself, beat for beat.

_"It's too consistent to be equipment failure, so we have to consider a range of possibilities at this..."_

__

A silhouette rose to its feet on top of the plane, blocking out the stars, illuminated only by the electricity still singing over it.

The newcomer pointed a long, slender katana down at Snake, the flare light turning its blade blood red. "Hold it right there, Snake!"

A bullet pinged off the stranger's feet, courtesy of Agent Saphira, and they blurred away. In a flash, a young man with a sheet of white hair and the strangest body armor Snake had ever seen kicked it out of her hand and had his katana at her throat. In another flash of silver and steel, Agent Darksmith joined the fray, freeing his partner, who didn't pause for a second before she'd joined the duel with knives in both hands. They all looked like a slideshow sped up, seeming to skip through the air at random, moving almost too fast to see in the dark.

Snake scrambled back to Ocelot and Eva, all three of them pressing against the WIG's exterior. Zero's voice fuzzed back into his ear. "Snake? What's going on? We just had another anomaly, can you hear me?"

Eva was getting to her feet, her face tight and one hand pressed to the wound in her side. She didn't take the hand Snake offered, instead thumping the plane as she leaned on it. "Let's get out of here."

"We can't," Snake protested. He saw Ocelot raising a revolver at the whirling mass of time travelers and grabbed his wrist before he could fire. "Don't! We need them to find the Boss!"

Ocelot glared at him. "You think I'd miss?"

"With the tranq in your system? Better not chance it."

"Snake," Eva cut in, "your tranq gun."

Snake drew the pistol; good idea, aiming to stun rather than kill gave him some wiggle room. On maybe his fifth adrenaline surge of the last twenty-four hours, his aim could only be so steady, but it'd be steadier than Ocelot's.

The young Major caught him by the wrist, but unlike Snake, he didn't pull his aim away. "Wait."

Ocelot's grip kept his hand steady enough that when one blur materialized into Darksmith, he had a clear shot at his head. The agent went down wordlessly. Saphira stumbled when she saw this, about to call out to her downed partner, standing still just long enough that Snake's next round caught her in the chest.

But when he took aim at the last remaining target, the young man caught his eye and growled _"don't."_

The tranq round pinged off his shoulder. That armor was some sturdy stuff. The young man advanced towards them while Snake aimed for his head. Suddenly, his gaze snapped upwards, and Snake took the split-second chance. The young man dropped like a stone.

"Snake-!" Eva started, both he and Ocelot followed where she was pointing. Above them, the sky had begun to dance with sparks again, but this time they spread out far across the black.

Agent Saphira let out a hysterical giggle, unwound by the tranquilizer taking its time with her. "Oh, _now_ we've done it."

Zero's voice over the radio was white noise. Snake's gaze was fixed to the sky as the warped patch resolved into a plane of light above them, an insignia like the Time Cops' emblazoned on the bottom of a craft unlike any Snake had seen before. It easily covered both them and the WIG, shining a spotlight down on all of them.

"Major," Snake said to his radio, voice flat.

_"Snake, what the bloody hell is going on down there?"_

"I don't even know where to start. One thing."

_"What is it??"_

"You were right about the UFOs."

A voice boomed over the night, issuing from the craft: _"This is the Watchmen. You are engaging in actions at a high risk of paradox. Cease_ now, _or risk detainment."_

* * *

 

METAL GEAR SAGA  
Paradox Backlash

Ch. 2 "Criminal, Criminal"

 

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY

Gill J. "geejaysmith" Smith

 

STARRING  
  
Naked Snake (David Hayter)  
EVA (Suzetta Miñet)  
Major "Revolver" Ocelot (Josh Keaton)    
The Boss (Lori Alan)  
Revolver "Shalashaska" Ocelot (Troy Baker)  
The Cobra Unit

FEATURING

Diamond Dogs  
Punished "Venom" Snake (Kiefer Sutherland)  
Benedict "Kazuhira" Miller (Robin Atkin Downes)  
Operation Snake Eater Radio Support  
Raiden (Quinton Flynn)

AND INTRODUCING

Agent Saphira [(Rachel Rose Mitchell)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3C1H4l9eIU)  
Agent Darksmith [(Joel Varg Johansson)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9DST-6jIBU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is now a bad time to mention I've been in the Homestuck fandom for six years because I apologize for nothing. 
> 
> **On Tone Whiplash:** I kinda realized while editing this that the sheer absurdity of the situations Team Snake and the Cobra Unit find themselves in makes it very easy bring some levity to the prose while everything around them goes completely Fruit Loops. As opposed to the Boss, one of the most outwardly serious characters in the Metal Gear franchise, who I just dropped into its most grounded installment. So I'm afraid we're just gonna have to roll with it for now, folks.
> 
> **On Video Game Logic:** Certain video game abstractions and conventions are being interpreted literally for the purposes of the narrative. So the codec ringing is audible to other characters, Snake actually has that much crap in his pockets, and the Boss really did tell him to "trust his instincts as a gamer" in a year where Pong would've blown everyone's minds with how advanced it was. 
> 
> **On the Cobras:** I've had to let fanon step in to fill a lot of gaps where they're concerned. It is both incredibly freeing and incredibly intimidating that no matter what I do, I technically can't be wrong. So there are details in this chapter and in coming chapters that mention or allude to other works. These include, but aren't limited to:
> 
>   * [The Joy of Battle: Historical Espionage Action](http://archiveofourown.org/works/770621) by Slythgeek: A majority (especially the Cobras' backstories and civilian names) is drawn from here, as the author did a tremendous job of doing the legwork on historical research and backstories for individual members of the Cobra Unit. 
>   * [Sorrowchan's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrowchan/pseuds/Sorrowchan) work (One of maybe three people I've found who explores the group dynamics of the Cobras outside of Joy and Sorrow) 
>   * [Rising Sun](http://archiveofourown.org/works/20498) by Thene and its companion, [Nightfall](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11306124) by arienai 
> 
> A HUGE kudos to the original authors of these works, which I have lovingly ripped off and synthesized into the amalgam you see before you. 
> 
>   * **On people recognizing the Boss in 1984 (or, not):** Considering Ocelot ever assume, even for a second, that Snake was the Boss _while she was still alive_ , I concluded there might be some details about her that aren't widely circulated (like the fact that she's definitely not a scruffy brunette dude in his late twenties). That, or Ocelot is very dumb. Or he's playing dumb, if you're one of the people who think Ocelot has an almost god-like command over the events unfolding around him at all times (which, for the record, I do not). I'm going on the assumption that what the Boss looks and/or sounds like in person isn't widely known following her death, unless you're a higher-up in government or the intelligence community; they can conduct a voice print analysis on the AI Pod, but the Average Joe in 1984 probably isn't going to see someone who looks like her and think "ah yes, the Boss, the legendary hero of WW2 who fell from grace and died a traitor." I'll even go so far as to say there's canonical evidence this is the case! The hospital in the opening chapter of MGSV has a goddamn *statue* of her out front. Why keep a monument to a despicable turncoat? And considering Zero picked out the location, I'd say it's not impossible he had a hand in the statue being there in the first place. Commissioning a stealthy likeness of his old friend to preserve her memory? Maybe. Anyway, if someone who looked and sounded like 80's-era Carrie Fisher turned up next to you in line at Starbucks tomorrow, your first logical response probably "my god, it's Carrie Fisher", and you probably wouldn't think time travel was involved. So most of the Diamond Dogs aren't going to make the connection, at least not right away. And they definitely aren't going to say anything about it if Big Boss tells them to keep their mouths shut. Kaz may not know what she looks like, but definitely knows *about* the Boss and definitely heard her voice during the Peace Walker Incident. So if anyone in this mix is gonna put two and two together, it'll probably be him.
> 


**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so here's how this is gonna work. I'm in school and school is hell and I'm trying to wrap my prior project, Double Death of the Author. It's a Homestuck alt-ending two years running and it's entering the home stretch, and that homestretch consists of a lot of animation that I, our only regular artist and obvious master of logistics, thought would be a good idea. DDOTA takes priority because it’s my current project and my cowriter is graduating in May and wants it some semblance of wrapped by then. So what we're gonna try to do here is chunky chapters like this (10k+ words) BIMONTHLY. That is, EVERY OTHER MONTH. Once DDOTA is finished we shall see if the schedule holds.


End file.
